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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



MONDAY MORNING 
AND OTHER POEMS 



Monday Morning 

AND OTHER POEMS 



By 

JAMES OPPENHEIM 

Author of "Doctor Rast," etc. 



STURGIS & WALTON 

COMPANY 

1909 



2,%%^ 



7& 



Copyright 1909 
BySTURGIS & WALTON COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1909 



THE MASON-HENRY PEBSS 

SYRACUSE AND NEW YORK 



©CLA^?5:r: 



^0 90V ^^itt 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Monday Morning 3 

Saturday Night 6 

The Child 9 

The Grandmother 10 

The Lincoln-Child 12 

First Glimpses of the Hills 23 

The Haunted World 24 

Far in Virginia Hills 25 

New York, from a Skyscraper 30 

The Ice-Cream Saloon 33 

A Tenement Room 36 

Morning in Central Park 39 

Hymn Before Marriage 44 

The Sweat-shop Workers 46 

The Women Wage-Slaves 49 

Up Long Island Sound 51 

Wireless 53 

The New Knighthood 56 

An Italian Funeral 59 

Lower Broadway 63 

The Nickel Theater 66 

The Coming of May 69 

Ellis Island 72 

The Home-Coming 76 

The Excursion Boat 80 

Immigrants in the Bay 83 

vii 



viii Contents 

Page 

Home, after Work 86 

Pain 88 

The World-Home gi 

A Song of Labor 93 

The Human Dead 96 

Mountaintop 99 

Roosevelt 106 

The Marriage-Hymn 114 

The Deeps 119 

The Cry of Man 120 

The Jews 127 

The Social Workers 129 

The May Party 132 

Manhattan, O My Home 134 

Coney Island 138 

The Sun-Hymn of the City 140 

Morning 142 

In the Forest 145 

The East River Bridge Market 147 

The Trolley Lovers 150 

Prepare Ye the Way! 153 

The Night of Souls 156 

Ocean 158 

The Fight of Peace 160 

Leaving New York 163 

Early April 165 

The Reason 167 

Revelation 168 

A Bit of Spring Music 170 



Contents ix 

Page 

You Mean So Much to Me 175 

May 176 

Home in the Storm 177 

Ecstatic May 1 79 

Mother and Father 180 

Excerpts from "Adam and Eve" 

I am rocked in the cradle of love 201 

What shall I love ? 202 

Adam, when told about Eve 203 

Adam, on first seeing Eve 204 

henceforth I shall go 206 

Adam's Song to Eve 207 

We must love each other forever 209 

Eve's Song 210 

1 pant with the glory of the woods 211 

Daffodil buds waken 212 

The Death-Birth Days 214 

Adam's Prayer 215 

Eve to her Child , 216 

The Child 217 

Sunrise on the Mountaintop 218 

Morning Song 220 

Under the leaves of the maple 221 

Hymn on the Mountain 223 



MONDAY MORNING 

AND OTHER POEMS 



MONDAY MORNING 

MOROSE gray Monday morning again, and 
baleful business again, 
And the ride from YorkvUle to Chatham Square, 

jammed with women and men 
In the cylinder car on Its thumping wheels, and the 

moody, sad, seared faces 
Burled In morning papers, and squalid as smoke- 
and time-soiled laces. 

Shopgirls, salesmen, factory hands, cashiers, me- 
chanics, clerks — 

O Shelley, Shakespeare, Darwin, Christ I you were 
human, your works 

Made Earth the brain of God's million worlds! 
Through the crowded City of Stars 

Earth wandered with dream and toll — ^but to-day? 
What Christ illumes these cars? 

Have epochs of suns flaking worlds cast forth this 

Monday carload alone? 
O dreams of David, O faith of Luther, O love of 

Lincoln, and moan, 



4 Monday Morning 

Still shaking the world from our million martyrs, 

our saints' prophetical pity — 
Are these the issues of their mighty hearts, these 

stern stone-souls of the city? 

Cease! This is human judging of human! If 

among all the storming suns 
Yonder wizened and withered woman whom the 

crowd tramples and shuns 
Were the only created soul, what a marvel, what a 

splendor of strength and brain — 
What a miracle that the dead dust should think, 

labor, feel joy, feel pain ! 

O life, God-yeasted! Even last night, next door, 

was a new-born soul 
Forced crying through human flesh to the Earth, a 

being cast solid and whole. 
With heart, with brain, with soul among men — ^as 

real as I am — as human — 
And lo, in this paper, a list of deaths — what man 

lost worlds, what woman? 

Surely this moment huge Earth is rolling beneath 
the floors of these cars. 



Monday Morning 5 

And we wonderful living organisms are blown In 

the cyclone of stars ! 
Yet do I know that God's purpose with man reaches 

each life like a root, 
That His worlds of suns In myriad millions Is a 

Tree and Man Is the Fruit ! 

O we miracles humbled In the day's dust of our 

life's minute exactness! 
O Sin and Pain and Death, and the Soul crouching 

and crying In blackness ! 
Earth is God's foundry; we are the slag — slag that 

is spirit and clod 
That is angel and ape — In terrible fires we are 

wrought by the living God ! 

Wrought by the God Into working Souls — let be, 

manners and features ! 
Behind each face Is a greater than stars — creators 

are these, not creatures. 
Our way is toward God this Monday morning, 

toward Death's unvlslon'd Goals, 
This car is winging through Deeps of the Lord 

with Its eighty Earth-anchored Souls. 



SATURDAY NIGHT 

THE lights of Saturday night beat golden, 
golden over the pillared street — 
The long plate-glass of a Dream- World olden is 

as the footlights shining sweet — 
Street-lamp — flambeau — glamour of trolley — com- 
et-trail of the trains above 
Splash where the jostling crowds are jolly with 
echoing laughter and human love. 

This Is the City of the Enchanted: and these are 
her Enchanted People : 

Far and far is Daylight, haunted with whistle of 
mill and bell of steeple — 

The Eastern tenements loose the women, the West- 
ern flats release the wives 

To touch, where all the ways are common, a glory 
to their sweated lives. 

The leather of shoes In the brilliant casement sheds 

a lustre over the heart — 
The high-heaped fruit In the flaring basement 

glow with the tints of Turner's art — 
6 



Saturday Night 7 

Darwin's dream and the eye of Spencer saw not 

such a gloried race 
As here, In copper light intenser than desert sun, 

glides face by face. 



This drab washwoman, dazed and breathless, ray- 
chiselled in the golden stream. 

Is a magic statue standing deathless — her tub and 
soap-suds touched with Dream — 

Yea, in this people, glamour-sunnied, democracy, 
wins heaven again — 

Here the unlearned and the unmoneyed laugh in 
the lights of Lover's Lane ! 

O Dream-World lights that lift through the ether 

millions of miles to the Milky Way ! 
To-night Earth rolls through a golden weather 

that lights the Pleiades where they play ! 
Yet . . . God? Does He lead these sons and 

daughters? Yea, do they feel, with a passion 

that stills, 
God on the face of the moving waters, God in the 

quiet of the hills ? 



8 Saturday Night 

Yet . . . what if the million-mantled mountains, 

and what if the million-moving sea 
Are here alone in facades and fountains — our deep 

stone-world of humanity — 
We builders of cities and civilizations walled 

away from the sea and the sod 
Must reach, dream-led, for our revelations through 

one another — as far as God. 

Through one another — through one another — no 
more the gleam on sea or land — 

But so close that we see the Brother — and under- 
stand — and understand! 

Till, drawn in swept crowd closer, closer, we see 
the gleam in the human clod, 

And clerk and foreman, peddler and grocer are In 
our Family of God! 



THE CHILD 

YOU may be Christ or Shakespeare, little child, 
A saviour or a sun to the lost world — 
There is no babe born but may carry furled 
Strength to make bloom the world's disastrous 

wild ! 
O what then must our labors be to mould you, 
To open the heart, to build with dream the brain, 
To strengthen the young soul in toil and pain, 
Till our age-aching hands no longer hold you — 

Vision far-dreamed! — But soft! if your last goal 
Be low, if you are only common clay — 
What then? Toil lost? Were our toil treb- 
led, nay! 

You are a Soul, you are a human Soul, 

A greater than the skies ten-trillion starred, 
Shakespeare no greater, O you slip of God! 



GRANDMOTHER 

The glory of her face still lives with us . . . 
The glory of her heart works in our hearts . . . 
The glory of her Soul is warmth of Sun 
And light of Sun, and in her holy presence 
Hushed are our wild world-hearts with pouring 

Peace ! 
Ah, golden days, ah, mellow Indian Summer, 
Ah, golden Autumn of the year of man . . . 
The days are hers, the golden days are hers ! 
She has known life, she has known earliest dreams 
Of wandering childhood, earliest girlhood dreams, 
Earliest womanly love; the passion of the mother; 
The burden of the maker of the Home; 
The pangs of Birth; the quicksand-clutch of 

Death . . . 
Wife, woman, toiler, mother, guardian, nurse . . . 
O lowly angeT of three generations ! 

She has gone through it all : all dreams we know, 
All pangs we seek to tear from our torn hearts. 
All joys that thrill us, all wild hours of grief, 
All folly, wisdom, all that makes up life. 



Grandmother ii 

Has she gone through . . . gone through unknown 

to Fame, 
Unhonored, unapplauded, meek and pure, 
And lo, now she emerges from the Fight, 
The Smoke and Thunder and the Noise of Life, 
Radiant, mellowed, and the golden days 
Are hers : the golden Autumn days are hers ! 
Unvexed by brawling problems of the hour 
Her very glance solves all : she brings to us 
A sweet solution of the Life on Earth, 
Yea, tender touches of eternal God, 
Not preached in words, but raining from her Soul 
As Autumn haze in the golden Indian Summer 
Fills through the woodlands, and the world is lost. 



THE LINCOLN-CHILD 

CLEARING in the forest, 
In the wild Kentucky forest, 

And the stars, wintry stars strewn above 1 

O Night that is the starriest 

Since Earth began to roll — 

For a Soul 

Is born out of Love ! 

Mother love, father love, love of Eternal God — 

Stars have pushed aside to let him through — 

Through heaven's sun-sown deeps 

One sparkling ray of God 

Strikes the clod — 

(And while an angel-host through wood and clear- 
ing sweeps!) 

Born in the Wild 

The Child- 
Naked, ruddy, new, 

Wakes with the piteous human cry and at the 
mother-heart sleeps. 

To the mother wild berries and honey, 
To the father awe without end, 

12 



The Lincoln- Child 13 

To the child a swaddling of flannel — 
And a dawn rolls sharp and sunny 
And the skies of winter bend 
To see the first sweet word penned 
In the godliest human annal. 

Frail Mother of the Wilderness — - 
How strange the world shines in 
And the cabin becomes chapel 
And the baby reveals God — 
Sweet Mother of the Wilderness, 
New worlds for you begin, 
You have tasted of the apple 
That giveth wisdom starred. 

Do you dream, as all Mothers dream, 

That the child at your heart 

Is a marvel apart, 

A frail star-beam 

Unearthly splendid? 

Ah, you are the one mother 

Whose dream shall come true, 

Though another, not you, 

Shall see it ended. 



14 The Lincoln-Child 

Soon In the wide wilderness, 

On a branch blown over a creek, 

Up a trail of the wild coon, 

In a lair of the wild bee. 

The wildling boy, by Danger's stress. 

Learnt the speech the wild things speak. 

Learnt the Earth's eternal tune 

Of God and starred Eternity — 

Went to school where God Himself was master, 

Went to church where Earth was minister — 

And in Danger and Disaster 

Felt his future manhood stir ! 

All about him lay the landj 

Eastern cities. Western prairie, 

Wild, immeasurable, grand, 

But he was lost where blossomy boughs make airy 

Bowers in the forest, and the sand 

Makes brook-water a clear mirror that gives back 

Green branches and trunks black 

And clouds across the heavens lightly fanned. 

Yet all the Future dreams, eager to waken, 
Within that woodland soul — 



The Lincoln-Child 15 

And the bough of boy has only to be shaken 
That the fruit drop whereby this Earth shall roll 
A little nearer God than ever before. 
Little recks he of war, 

Of national millions waiting on his word — 
Dreams still the Event unstirred 
In the heart of the boy, the little babe of the wild — 
But the years hurry and the tide of the sea 
Of Time flows fast and ebbs, and he, even he, 
Must leave the wilderness, the wood-haunts wild — 
Soon shall the cyclone of Humanity 
Tearing through Earth suck up this little child 
And whirl him to the top, where he shall be 
Riding the storm-column in the lightning-stroke. 
Calm at the peak, while down below worlds rage. 
And Earth goes out In blood and battle-smoke, 
And leaves him with the sun — an epoch and an 
age! 

Hushed be our hearts, and veneration 

Steep us in joy. 

Hushed be our mills, while a saved nation 

Reveres this boy! 

Hushed be our homes, while a holy elation 



i6 The Lincoln-Child 

Makes the heart mild — 

Each home has a child 

And we worship a race of Lincolns in each that 

we love ! 
No, they may not stand above 
The storm and steer the States, 
These little children that are born from us — - 
No, they may not Lincolns prove 
In the grandeur of their fates — 
But Lincolns let them be in the heart and in the 

soul — 
Even thus 
Shall our Earth again toward God a little swifter, 

nearer roll. 
Even thus 
Shall our children touch the stars where we have 

only glimpsed the Goal. 
Even thus and only thus 
Through the Future's arch-like span 
May they go American! 
In his spirit shall they grow. 
To his law they shall be bound. 
With his light of God shall glow. 
With his love of Man be crowned 1 



The Lincoln-Child 17 

Think of the miracle! 

A child so like our child, 

A babe born in the wild, 

A little clod of clay, sweet blossoming and beau- 
tiful. 

Earth that is dumb and dead, 

Earth risen in child-shape, 

And suddenly agape 

Are the eyes and lips, and spread 

Is the heart and coiled the brain — 

And lo, the Silences are slain — 

In our Wilderness of Silence where we were only 
two, 

Man and Wife, 

Comes this third and like the voice of God breaks 
through 

With his life — 

And he answers back our Silence with his babbling, 
wordy strife — 

Born of woman. 

Born of man. 

He is human 

And he can 

Grow beyond us in the grandeur we began I 



1 8 The Lincoln-Child 

And none greater than this boy 

Whom this day 

We revere with holy joy, 

And we thank the stars the clay 

In Kentucky took on human shape and spoke, 

In the Wilderness awoke. 

In the woodlands grew a creature of the wild, 

This February child! 

And lo, as he grew ugly, gaunt, 

And gnarled his way into a man. 

What wisdom came to feed his want. 

What worlds came near to let him scan — 

And as he fathomed through and through 

Our dark and sorry human scheme, 

He knew what Shakespeare never knew, 

What Dante never dared to dream — 

That Men are one 

Beneath the sun, 

And before God are equal souls — 

This truth was his. 

And this it is 

That round him such a glory rolh 

For not alone he knew it as a truth, 



The Lincoln-Child 19 

He made it of his blood, and of his brain — 

He crowned It on the day when piteous Booth 

Sent a whole land to weeping with world-pain — 

When a black cloud blotted the sun 

And men stopped In the streets to sob, 

To think Old Abe was dead — 

Dead, and the day's work still undone, 

Dead, and war's ruining heart athrob. 

And earth with fields of carnage freshly spread — 

Millions died fighting. 

But In this man we mourned 

Those millions, and one other — 

And the States today uniting. 

North and South, 

East and West, 

Speak with a people's mouth 

A rhapsody of rest 

To him our beloved best. 

Our big, gaunt, homely brother — 

Our huge Atlantic coast-storm in a shawl, 

Our cyclone In a smile — our President, 

Who knew and loved us all 

With love more eloquent 



20 The Lincoln-Child 

Than his own words — with Love that in real deeds 
was spent. 

Shelley's was a world of Love, 

Carlyle's was a world of Work, 

But Lincoln's was a world above 

That of a dreamer or a clerk — 

Lincoln wed the one to the other — 

Made his a world where love gets into deeds — 

Where man was more than merely brother, 

Where the high Love was meeting human needs ! 

And lo, he made this plan 

Memorably American! 

Through all his life this mighty Faith unfurled! 

O let us see, and let us know 

That if our hearts could catch his glow 

A faith like Lincoln's would transform the world ! 

Oh, to pour love through deeds — 

To be as Lincoln was! — 

That all the land might fill its daily needs 

Glorified by a human Cause! 

Then were America a vast World-Torch 

Flaming a faith across the dying Earth, 



The Lincoln-Child 2i 

Proclaiming from the Atlantic's rocky porch 
That a New World was struggling at the Birth 1 

Ah, is this not the day 

That rolls the Earth back to that mighty hour 
When the sweet babe in the log-cabin lay 
And God was in the room, a Presence and a 

Power ? — 
When all was sacred — even the father's heart — 
And the stirred Wilderness stood still, 
And roaring flume and shining hill 
Felt the working of God's Will? 
O living God, O Thou who living art. 
And real, and near, draw, as at that babe's birth, 
Into our souls and sanctify our Earth — 
Let down Thy strength that we endure 
Mighty and pure 

As mothers and fathers of our own Lincoln-child — 
Make us more wise, more true, more strong, 

more mild. 
That we may day by day 
Rear this wild blossom through its soft petals of 

clay, 
That hour by hour 



22 The Lincoln-Child 

We may endow It with more human power 

Than is our own — 

That it may reach the goal 

Our Lincoln long has shown ! — 

O Child — flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, 

Soul torn from out our Soul! 

May you be great, and pure, and beautiful — 

A Soul to search this world 

To be a father, brother, comrade, son, 

A toller powerful, 

A man with strength unfurled, 

A man whose toil is done 

One with God's Law above, 

Work wrought through Love! 



FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE HILLS 

THE pasture from the gray stone-wall 
Lifts with gray stones and briers and 
boulders 
Slanting toward Western skies; a shawl 
Of clouds upon her chilly shoulders! 

Moss-bearded are the pasture-bars, 

A pool beyond holds the tossed skies, 

A ripple breaks the sun in stars, 

A splendor smites the pool and dies! 

Then brooding on tremendousness. 

Immersed and lost on solid Earth, 

Far, far from the World's press and stress 
That brings almighty deeds to birth. 

Washed far away like a swept wreck 

Foundered where vast seas empty and fill, 

A man is but a restless fleck 

Of thinking dust in sky and hill. 

How little is he after all — 

Loosed from the city's life-packed pod 
He blows, a seed, o'er a gray stone-wall 

Lost in the fastnesses of God. 
23 



THE HAUNTED WORLD 

YONDER fall of the leaf, yonder splashing 
of water, 

Have all one meaning to me. 
Under the mute wet rocks, over the breathing tree- 
tops, 
A voice speaks breathlessly, 
Ushered into the woods mid the still slim trunks of 

the pine, 
Waving the reddened boughs and tearing the 

tangled vine, 
A voice from the world Is shuddering down through 
the woodland's spine. 
The wild world's misery ! 

Far have I sped from men, far from the steel- 
stone city 
To meet with God In the woods. 
To see the beauty of earth as it spins with the 
flaming planets. 
And steep myself in Its moods. 
But O not far enough to escape the anguish of man. 
On every leaf it Is stamped, on every blade is Its 

ban — 
Into the wind it swung, Into the stream It ran, 
And lo ! In the sky it broods ! 
24 



FAR IN VIRGINIA HILLS 

FAR in Virginia hills 
A father and mother have buried their little 
child, 

And the news so tragic-wild 

Breaks through my heart where the sea breaks 
about me and fills 

My being with passions — brother- and father-pas- 
sions 

And the sun grows dim in the day. 

What can I say, 

For our own little child is the age of the boy that 
is dead — 

And our own little child has haunted our hours 
with bliss — 

Our lives seem woven in his, 

wondrous star-girdled head! 

1 must wander afar and alone and afoot by the 

many-changing and million-tinted 

Cradle of song and spirit of motion, 

My outdoor Father, my Ocean — 

I must brood on his face till I see on his lips im- 
printed 

25 



26 Far in Virginia Hills 

Solace and tender love, for the sea 
Is a living being to me. 

here let my spirit reach out from Its troubled 

earth-narrow home 
Far on the undulant foam 
And vaster and deeper and higher 
In sea-air and sky-space and sun-fire I 
Let me with Death foregather, 
Ocean, my Father! 

The sea Is haunted with news of the child that Is 

gone— 
The cry of the tide on the sand Is the cry of the 

mother, 
The tears of the wave-wet moss drip on — 
Far is Virginia, far, but my heart is a brother, 
A mourning brother of those that mourn, — 
My heart with grief Is torn. 

1 know, I know ! Is not our glorious boy 
Touched with things greater than we, and wrought 

of the laughter, 
The Immense loveliness gleaming through nature*s 
rind? 



Far in Virginia Hills zj 

Has he not sunnied our mornings with joy, 
And starred our evenings with glory, till our here- 
after 
Is dreamed about his opening heart and mind? 
O sea, O wistful sky. 
If he should die ! 
If he of our flesh born 
Out of our hearts were torn I 
If nowhere in this space 
We saw his face ! 
If from life's blinding storm 
We could not clutch and warm 
That child upon our knee ! 
What then? Answer, O sea. 
How would it be ? 

And then as I watched the far gray yearning of 

ocean, 
And how he was striving for words with each new 

wave on the beach, 
It was my faith that he lived and Earth and the 

stars in their motion 
And I knew that each to each 
We were living brother and brother I 



28 Far in Virginia Hills 

And I longed that my faith be sped 

To that far Virginia mother, 

There where she mourned her dead! 



Mother — so would I say — a creature so glorious- 
wild 

Struck from the chaos of nature and shaped so 
personal-sweet, 

Is more than frolic and laughter, and face and 
fingers and feet. 

And more than your own child — 

So precious is he to a struggling world, 

A dreaming and toiling God, 

He cannot be re-furled 

And merged again with the sod — 

No more the child will come 

With the love that enthralled and bewitched. 

He has taken something out of your home. 

But Nature he has enriched — 

Nature he has enriched — the sea. 

The air, the soil, are filled with victorious 

Music of immortality — 

There is something personal, near, new-glorious 

In all of the world : it is he ! 



Far in Virginia Hills 29 

And now the sea shouts — look, how the long bil- 
lows heighten — 
See how the swallow skims in a glory of gale — 
O plunging glorious seas, O combers that whiten 
Like a tumble of naked boys in the long green 

swale — 
What IS there now about me haunting the air 
With the cooing lovely laughter that children use ? 
What makes the vista'd horizons gleam so fair? 
What news, Ocean, what news? 
Is it the child abroad in the cradle-motion 
Of singing deeps, is it the child, my Ocean? 



NEW YORK, FROM A SKYSCRAPER . 

UP In the heights of the evening skies I see my 
City of Cities float 
In sunset's golden and crimson dyes: I look, and 

a great joy clutches my throat ! 
Plateau of roofs by canyons crossed: windows by 

thousands fire-unfurled — 
O gazing, how the heart Is lost in the Deepest City 
of the World I 

Red rolls the Hudson, golden the Bay: Brooklyn 

melts through horizons tall: 
Deep In Broadway's starry gray I see the black 

man-Insects crawl: 
Chimneys smoke and glittering cars groan with 

tons of the homeward rush : 
New York goes Home beneath Its stars: what 

psalms of Joy float up this hush ! 

O sprawling City! Worlds In a world! Hous- 
ing each strange type that Is human — 

Yonder a Little Italy curled — here the haunt of 
the Scarlet Woman — 



30 



New York, From a Skyscraper 31 

The night's white Bacchanals of Broadway — the 
Ghetto pushcarts ringed with faces — 

Wall Street's roar and the Plaza's play — O welter- 
ing focus of all Earth's races! 

Walking your Night's many-natloned byways — 

brushing Sicilians and Jews and Greeks — 
Meeting gaunt Bread Lines on your highways — 

watching night-clerks In your flaming peaks — 
Marking your Theaters' outpour of splendor — 

pausing on doorsteps with resting Mothers — 
I have marveled at Christs with their messages 

tender, their daring dream of a World of 

Brothers ! 

Brothers? What means Irish to Greek? What 

the Ghetto to Morningside? 
How shall we weld the strong and the weak while 

millions struggle with light denied? 
Yet, but to follow these Souls where they roam — 

ripping off housetops, the city's mask — 
At Night I should find each one In a Home, at 

Morn I should find each one at a Task! 

Labor and Love, four-million divided — surely the 
millions at last are a-move — 



32 New York, From a Skyscraper 

Surely the brotherhood-slant is decided — the Social 

Labor, the Social Love I 
Surely four millions of Souls close-gathered in this 

one spot must stagger the world — 
O City, Earth's Future is Mothered and Fathered 

where your great streets feel the Man-tides 

hurled ! 

For the Souls in one car where they hang on the 

straps could send this City a-wing from the 

sod — 
Each man is a tiny Faucet that taps the infinite 

reservoir of God! — 
What if they turned the Faucet full stream? 

What if our millions to-night were aware? 
What if to-morrow they built to their Dream the 

City of Brothers in laughter and prayer? 



THE ICE-CREAM SALOON 

HAVING considered, like David, the heavens, 
the stars in their infinite courses. 
With the Inner Vision, with the outer Skies, dream- 
ing the suns to their sources, 
I thought what a wild Sahara sandstorm the stars 

in their whirling swarm, 
And how the Earth blows, lost and half-dark, with 
Its sun, in the infinite storm. 

Blows even to-night — prairied and seaM, citied, 
a-swarm with its millions 

Of souls, its billions of life, swept vast from a 
Past of souls in decilllons — 

The black choked teeming Past! When lo, sud- 
den a flood of light 

Here on Eighth Avenue (Earth, stars a-roU!) 
O flame in the black-souled Night! 

Behind plate-glass, at a marble bar, sat shapes In 

the image of me, — 
Without were the stars, and thoughts of the stars 

— Earth in Eternity — 

3 33 



34 The Ice-Cream Saloon 

Within, a twenty-foot mirror flashed back twenty 

faces tired-white, 
Hair fan-swirled, eyes in star-glare of strong 

golden electric light. 

Dry throats and the foam of the sparkling drink — 
night and the stars and Earth rolling — 

They with a glass, I with a sky, each to his draught 
consoling — 

They, I, between two Eternities caught on curious 
errands this night — 

Each seeking out for our golden Vision, our mo- 
ment of Love and of Light. 

Such are the changes of the earth-moored Soul, 

such is the life named human ! 
All of us dream-led, all but at heart merely a man 

or a woman. 
Seeking our Vision in a Sky or a Glass, finding the 

strength that shall hurl us 
On the morrow back to the huge World- Riot — the 

blows that bruise, but unfurl us 

Ever more human, more perfect Workers, ever 
more like that God, 



The Ice-Cream Saloon 35 

The Master-Worker, the World-Creator — who 

fashioned us out of the sod, 
As we too create, yea, sweat out our worlds, even 

.thus made Godlike, thus 
Reaching (ways small, ways large) to God, that 

at Death He find God In us ! 



A TENEMENT ROOM 

AS a nest where the rooks bow down the 
branches, deep in the shattered street, 
this room — 
Black is the way and broken the steps that climb 

through the filthy gloom — 
Six dark strata of Souls lift up from the torrent of 

Souls that sweeps the street, 
The atmosphere is of human breathing, the noise, 
of vast hearts' beat ! 

As a lamp in the Deeps, the storm-deeps rolling, 

this room is a flame in the human storm. 
And I sit me down with Father and Mother and 

Children — cheery and warm! 
Under, far under, stupendous and still, the Earth 

rolls on with the million suns. 
Over, far over, stampeded through space, the herd 

of the wild stars runs. 

Under, but near, O near, touch-near, the roaring 

sea of Humanity rolls. 
Over, but near, O near, spirit-near, leaps the wild 

wave of Souls — 

36 



A Tenement Room 37 

And here, right here, the bright faces shine of 
these human beings, these Souls, these 
forms — 

I am nested deep in the human Deeps — aye, 
swirled in the Human storms! 

And I belong here by right of birth — I am even 

as these, I am one with these — 
How well their words and their glances and touch 

— each flush that flickers and flees — 
Are doors to their Souls where I enter in, and live 

five lives in the place of one, 
Are gates of common Man where we mingle like 

five blent rays of the sun ! 

O People! O human, human beings! I thank 
my stars that I too am human ! 

That I may share the up-struggle of the World 
with you, O Man, O Woman ! 

That I may taste your miraculous glories of Love 
and Gladness — deepest, of Pain! — 

That I may be of your shining faces in the World- 
rush, the labor and strain 1 



38 A Tenement Room 

That I may feel the lift and the thrill of hands 

that lock and of lips that meet, 
That I may sit in a little warm room with souls 

and hearts replete — 
That I may know, beyond grandeur of Earth, 

O Man, even here in the pitiful gloom 
Of these shattered walls, God's grandeur sweeps, 

yea, in a little room I 



MORNING IN CENTRAL PARK 

WHEN the morning sun 
Spills his red lights among the naked trees 
And one by one 

The hills awaken — and like wind-played seas 
Give back the music of the breeze, 
When among film and tracery of boughs 
Stripped by the winter's teeth, 
Green glow the sun-filled pines — O Man, unhouse 
Your head of human walls — get from beneath 
Shut ceilings — let the skies take off the roof 
Of your small room — and Into the Park at seven 
Go with tremendous stride — 
Earth there is open wide 

To the sun and the wind and the amplitude of 
heaven ! 

That Child, the World, from out the infinite night 

Draws through the dark 

Into the light — 

And all the sacred mystery of Birth 

Hovers on the Earth — 

Even in the pale of the man-gardened Park 

39 



40 Morning in Central Park 

The mystery of Morn, the beauty and the splendor 
Through the groves are slipping, from the boughs 

are dripping, 
A miracle without us, 
That yet the heart's core owns ! — 
Chant then the pebble-tripped waters shut in stones. 
Sparrows are over the turf chirping and tripping. 
And Man's World sings in a swinging circle about 

us! 

O film of ice skimming the crystal pool ! 

See, how it flashes in the wintry sun! 

And hear the water splash ! — how clean ! how cool ! 

And behold how visible, yea, on every one. 

The Silences of enormous centuries 

Brood on the rocks and the unstlrring trees ! 

Hushed be the heart ! for with the common Dawns 

A music, not of Earth or Sky, repeats — 

The hymns that Milton heard on singing morns, 

The songs the winter sunrise sang to Keats ! 

Gray reeling mufiled mist-voice lifted soft 

Into deep Shakespeare's brain — these may we hear 

In memory of English verse that oft 

Sings to the unforgetting ear. 



Morning in Central Park 41 

To him whose ear is tuned 

To Nature's harmonies, the mighty morn 

Has glories in it — glories slowly torn 

Out of the heart of the World-Presence, God — 

Mysteries, many-sunned and myriad-starred — 

Glories like balm 

To heal the wound 

Of hurtful life — glories that wind an arm 

Of many green fields about the tired head — 

Glories that from the dead rocks leap and spread 

The heart so wide, the very Earth we tread 

Rolls through with a mighty shout witnessing 

God— 
The skies themselves find room within us then — 
And all the stars, 

We absorb suns — and comets pulse their fires 
Along the blood — and like a tide through bars 
Of closing sand, out of the infinite sea 
Into the bay of our being rolleth the Lord! 
Lo, to our primal strength we are restored, 
Lo, we are Men ! 
Lo, we are strong again ! 
This Is the secret which the unblooded clerks 
Roofed all the hours of waking and of sleeping 



42 Morning in Central Park 

Miss — the true secret of Man's mightiest works — 
Go, till through you — body and brain — is sweep- 
ing 
Strength of the open skies and the open Earth — 
Make all that strength your own — 
Set suns a-roll in your veins, bring worlds to birth 
In the vast brain, drink up with your spirit, wealth 
Of sunrise health. 

Till to the stature of Man suddenly grown 
You feel the power of Earth fused with your own. 

Cities are wildernesses sculptured in stone — 

Man only there is living — in the death 

Of rocks Souls crowd, chanting a monotone 

Of many works — go you and get the breath 

Of living Creation in an enormous Earth — 

An Earth roofed only by Eternity — 

Feel the World-Presence, share the tumultuous 

birth 
Of Morning — learn, not toil, but how to be — 
To live, to enjoy, to divide with God the world — 
To drink that strength whereby the Soul unfurled 
To all her vastness, grows into a god — 
Then, O come back, come back to where men plod. 



Morning in Central Park 43 

Come back and bring the Earth you have annexed, 

Replenish the waste city with your wealth 

Of sunrise health — 

Soothe the poor brains toil-troubled and perplext, 

And do mighty Works — you have drawn from 

the sloping hill 
Strength of strong crops — from sun-enflooded 

branches 
Light, from morn music — now your heartstrings 

thrill 
With power — strength from the brain ava- 
lanches— 
You do the work of ten — 
You are a Man mighty among Men — 
And so God lowered in you and heart-released 
Liveth, that love subdues your human labor 
Even to the want and hunger of your neighbor — 
You are to the City a ray of the Dawn In the 
East! 



HYMN BEFORE MARRIAGE 

O NIGHT be clear, O stars be bright, 
O hearts be pure, O hands unite 
In tender love, in human love 
Upon our heavenly marriage night ! 

O let there roll, O sound and roll 
Grand music singing of the goal, 

The goal and godhood, goal and godhood 
Of the two-hearted human soul. 

Let every eye behold us two. 
Let every eye see deep and true 

God in us that creates new life 
From you and me, from me and you. 

O let them feel the undefiled 
Great passion that in brutes is wild : 
In us, Man's purest angelhood. 
The marriage that desires the child. 

We build our home, we start our race, 
To the far future, heavenly face, 

44 



Hymn Before Marriage 45 

O mother-wife, thine eyes are set 
And on them God has left His trace. 



O holy music of low speech 

As round us love's arms greatly reach 

And from pure passion brings the child 
That makes us blood-kin each to each. 

O marriage, thou art God in man, 
O we creators are, and can 

Bring forth our living universe, 
Our world within the Heavenly Plan. 



THE SWEAT-SHOP WORKERS 

WHEN the streets whiten through dawn's 
huge Silence, you are first of the morn- 
ing tide, 
You have kissed your children asleep : they stirred 
not; but your wife was there at your side — 
The old eyes still gazed, the old lips still spoke, 

the old Cause still drove you to toil — 
You are staggering down Canyons where soon the 
dead bed with a roaring river will boil. 

And as if the City a monster were, and you her 

morning food, 
You are swallowed Into her black-rlbb'd heart and 

whirled In her cyclone of blood. 
Round, round, round with the dizzy machines, 

the drowning storm of the Shop, 
With the rasping Boss-voice lightning about, and 

the Speed that cannot stop ! 

You are held to your task by the grip of the Soul, 
not the hope of the gain you shall glean. 



The Sweat-Shop Workers 47 

You are thrown, whole-man, into whirling work 

till you are the shop's machine. 
And then when the crumbling hours are worn, 

when at last to the stars they creep. 
Blinded with toil you shamble back home, and you 

kiss your children asleep. 

O labor-blasted and dreamless Man — have you 

breathed the health of the Sea, 
Have you sunn'd your Soul in the open skies, have 

you felt Eternity, 
Is Shakespeare yours? Have you sunk your cares 

in Broadway's dazzle and foam? 
You, of the two-roomM tenement-cliff, do you 

know the meaning of Home? 

Yea, surely, your wife ! But your Soul is blinded; 

you tumble into your bed : 
What shall the wild years do with your Soul? 

You have given your blood for bread ! 
But we that might gaze on your sleeping face with 

our modern uptown pity 
Would be dumbed with the revelation you are, 

O Galahad of the City! 



48 The Sweat-Shop Workers 

O sacrifice to your heart-loved children, you whose 

whole self is hurled 
Away, that their Souls may reach beyond yours 

and climb to a starry New World, 
That they may walk with the larger Souls, free 

from the stain of the sod, 
Let us back to our uptown houses, dumbed: for 

you have walked with your God! 



THE WOMEN WAGE-SLAVES 

O LOVELIEST of the loneliest of the Earth's 
loneliest miles, 
The interminable streets, the interminable crowds, 

the interminable granite piles, 
O loneliest in the lonely millions, hedged in by 

toil's cold bars. 
You, who have only a hall-room skylight to open 
out to the stars I 

World-peopled our city roars with labor, and rolls 

with a tide gigantic. 
Seas of humanity, oceans more fierce, more huge 

than the storm-led Atlantic, 
And you, you are flakes of the flying foam, breast 

bare to the bitter wind — 
Yet loveliest in the sloughs of the Deeps: you have 

starved, but you have not sinned ! 

You have starved : you are women of Joan's great 

heart, splendidly independent — 
Down the Great White Way of the New World 

City, ablaze with her sparkle resplendent, 

4 49 



^O The Women Wage-Slaves 

Your feet were firm, where others faltered: your 

Vision led beyond 
The crowd, to the peak of the Noble Woman: 

your Mother's ancient bond. 

Dreaming above your aching hands In the roaring 

factories, 
Dreaming through the undying hours and alien to 

all ease, 
Your cheeks go white, your blood throbs dim — 

life stales and the brain fags, 
You could cry when you think of your unused 

hopes, you could cry when you look at your 

rags. 

But oh, you have kept soul and flesh together, in- 
tact, and womanly pure. 

You have won the oldest fight of the world — 
'gainst Doom you shall endure — 

And what can we others grant you of good, O 
women miraculous? 

We might give you the ease of the flesh, but you — 
you bring new gods to us! 



UP LONG ISLAND SOUND 

WAREHOUSE and wharf sea-weathered, 
smoke and the 'longshore grime, 
TwiHght on two great cities whose rugged skylines 

climb 
Horizons, to the gray glimmer of the first faint 

star-sprinkle, 
With lights in a thousand windows that in the soft 
tides twinkle — 

And swaying and swashing and sliding in a rhythm 
up the gray River 

Into the twilight, over the waters — sweeping, for- 
ever 

Rocked m a rhythm, the mland steamer ripples 
the tide — 

And we glide away from the roaring World: to 
the hills we glide. 

Lo, now, meadows of fading green, and far gray 

highlands 
Twinkling with lights, and sweet little hilly droves 

of green islands 



52 up Long Island Sound 

Close at our side, and sudden flung far, loosed from 
their ties, 

Boundless horizons — Earth's ends ! — and enor- 
mous skies ! 

Deep is the breath of the cool June breeze that 

we drink while the tender 
Twilight thickens in black and the far-spaced starry 

splendor 
Travels forever above us; while lost on the dark 

promontory 
Lights wheel, laying across our hearts tumults of 

glory ! 

Great is the swell of the open country and travel- 
ing skies — 

Sweet is the rhythm and roll of the boat as it 
foamingly flies — 

But even with morning as our stray'd feet the new 
cities enter, 

We shall yearn for the roar, the stir, the cyclone 
of the World's Storm-Center ! 



WIRELESS 

THE seas are deep and the seas are wide, and 
or ever the days of creatures were, 
By sun and moon was pulled the tide and all the 

Earth was ocean-stir — 
Then came land and then came beast and then 

came Man, and five feet high 
Blinked his eyes on the churning yeast of a sea 
that melted in the sky. 

Laughing the five-foot creature stood against the 
leagues on leagues of the deep — 

Laughing he knotted a raft of wood and paddled 
his craft through hollow and steep — 

But the seas are deep and the seas are wide and^ 
they swallowed him down — and a host there- 
after — 

Till nations came like a vast ebb-tide and went 
down cured of insolent laughter. 

Nation by nation the daring came, with ribs of oak 
and with ribs of steel. 



53 



54 Wireless 

With wing of sail or heart of flame but the great 
sea sucked them keel by keel — 

Till, some escaped and some flew free, and mam- 
moth greyhounds skimmed the deep — 

Yet still the salt and dreadful sea was like a 
mastodon asleep. 

But now Earth rolls into newer ages — a new ally 

is leagued with man — 
His ship is torn when the tempest rages, his keel 

Is bound with the ancient ban. 
But out through the big and blinding weather and 

the thick black fog that chokes and smothers 
Man sends his cry through the infinite ether and 

calls to him his coursing Brothers. 

Lo, at his call the mighty steamers turn them 

about with a word of love. 
And deeds in the brains of ancient dreamers come 

real In flesh and live and move — 
The Brotherhood gathers on gliding foam and 

with sandal-seas are their frail feet shod — 
Man is making of Earth a Home, man is making 

of man a god. 



Wireless 55 

Lo, we have taken the Earth's rough features and 

builded cities and civilizations — 
Lo, we tiny sky-lost creatures are shadowed by our 

own creations — 
Earth, that was but rough seas and sands becomes 

a being with soul and heart — 
Man Is the Power of God with hands to build of 

Chaos an ordered Art ! 

Earth and the teeming fulness thereof is Man's: 

and In five feet of clay 
There Is light of Dream and fire of Love enough 

to burn the skies away — 
With every Labor the Soul enlarges — Its depths 

are vaster than the sea — 
We have not touched its starry marges, nor 

guessed how godlike we may be. 

Vast Eternities are before us with dreams and 

labors no soul may shirk: 
Pure with the Glory divine that bore us we shall 

loosen God in us : set Him to work : 
Unborn glories and grandeurs wait the releasing 

touch of a new creator: 
The Immense Creation of God is great but the 

human spirit shall make It greater. 



THE NEW KNIGHTHOOD 

IN the dust of the noon-day's Realness our newer 
Knights go out, 
No moons to lend bewitchment, no love-blazed 

forest-route — 
Glitters on wall and gutter the searching sordid 

sun — 
Real people with realest troubles! — Earth's War 
that is never won ! 

Of old did they tumble the villain to the smiles of 

the very young woman, 
Of old with clatter of armor they hunted the 

Superhuman, 
Love and song and enchantments lured them to 

secret lairs — 
But these — these trail for a Microbe up at the 

head of the stairs. 

They are swift In the filth of the hallway, and 

swift In the thick dust-motes 
That swirl through the street with the people, 

and settle In breathing throats, 

56 



The New Knighthood 57 

They are there where the Unfed hunger, and there 

where the Unclothed shake; 
With the dead they watch; with the weak they 

walk; with the sick they wake! 

Or, In the white-walled schoolroom their patient 

labor draws 
Slowly Thought from the thoughtless, out of 

child-chaos. Laws! 
Yea, they shape as the sculptor the soft wax-clay 

of the child, 
They lead young souls to the Clearing out of the 

waste of the Wild! 

Or, on the sheets of the Paper shot thousandfold 
through the street 

They pour such Light as they harbor, that the 
breakfast of Man be sweet, 

That the morning bring him his Planet to inspect 
from his door to Japan, 

That Man may walk million-hearted in the mil- 
lion-thick Earth of Man! 

Little of Fame and of Flowers, and less of Gold 
and of Ease, 



58 The New Knighthood 

The music that leads them is Service to the limit- 
less Needs of these, 

The reward is heart-touch with the Human — O 
Knights of the Silent Strife 

Have you seen the Grail where it hovers, have you 
drunk the fulness of Life? 



AN ITALIAN FUNERAL 

HUMBLY, O humbly, in slow procession, 
the hearse and horses, the drivers and 
mourners 
Trail between tenements hung with dark faces and 
eddying crowds at the gray street corners — 
Clouds hold the skies in, the gutter is muddy, 

workmen are ripping the street for a sewer, 
And lo, to a drum-throb musicians are leading the 
dead, the dead to a Church of the poor. 

A drum-throb! Hark, like a sob of a mother 

heart-reft at midnight, music is soaring. 
Cry from the deeps of the heart of the human, 

cry that breaks weird through the world's 

wild roaring — 
Blasts of the Law that strikes without pity, wails 

of the Love that Is bowed to the Law, 
Voice of all mortals blessing God's giving, God's 

taking : harking, I shiver with awe ! 



59 



6o An Italian Funeral 

And lo, to that music yon swarthy Italians between 
them are sawing a pine-beam in half, 

The dead-march rhythm runs through their labor; 
they swing, they sweat, they grumble and 
laugh; 

Hurrying men greet each other and jostle on er- 
rands of business: all are alive: 

But the dead trails through the red storm of the 
living, and the mourners are dumb in the 
loud man-hive. 

Now at the Church a shrunk shawled woman, 
weird with saint's eyes and prayer-given lips, 

Swings back the door, and lights the six candles, 
and bends to the Christ whose breast-gash 
drips; 

In creeps the coffin borne by stout drivers, and 
twenty poor humans pour shadowy after. 

Dark, dirty, bowed with a Pain more than mourn- 
ing; yon woman sheds it in ghastly laughter. 

O Poor, mean-begotten, rag-pickers, fruit-peddlers, 
refuse and riff-raff washed up a foul street. 

Stowed in a cellar under tons of great peoples, torn 
by the trample of millions of feet, 



An Italian Funeral 6i 

O Poor, have you too the dead In your rooms? 
Have you brought him forth for the world 
to see? 

Six candles light him ; a priest and a chanter sing- 
song old Latin to set the soul free. 

Jesus looks down and Mary beholdeth, incense 

arises: the dead Is dead! 
Women, O women weep under head-shawls, bleed, 

torn hearts, uncomforted ! 
Dead, he Is dead, that was dead since birth, that 

never awoke to the music and dream, 
A dumb forked beast that bred and fed mouths 

and was drowned at last In the mud of the 

stream. 

He Is gone : one mouth less now to be filled : but, 

oh, one toller less : he Is gone ! 
A month shall you nearly starve for the burial: 

you must pay, pay dearly for leave to mourn. 
And why do you do It? Is there love among 

shadows. In cellars; have you dreamt of 

eternal life? 
Were you led, after all, by the flaming Vision, 

O son, O brother, O mother, O wife? 



62 An Italian Funeral 

Lives a God In your world — your world where 

the sands forever sink down through the 

trusted sieves? 
I see you stare at the Christ on the wall : my heart 

Is torn as by hands — God lives! 
You see his face, you behold his sweetness: he 

gropes to you through a plaster cast: 
And lo, to me he gropes through your faces, he 

gropes, he touches, he thrills at last! 



LOWER BROADWAY 

IN thousand-foot shadows between the clijffs a 
little gray people is shadow-lost — 
And visions of faces are glimpsed in whiffs and 

vanish into the torrents tossed — 
Hardly I think that of a woman each of these 

mites was crying born, 
,And now comes risen in flesh and human, filling 
with thought and dream the morn, 

'With a heart that might hold the passion of Keats, 
with a soul that might speak with Lincoln's 
breath, 

With one great life that through these streets is 
hurled up-glorying into death — 

Yea, what toil by these souls is done, what Shakes- 
peare-vision or Caesar-strife 

In the twenty thousand times the sun rises and sets 
on a human life? 

I look up a thousand-windowed wall — then down 

on a woman's passing face — 
I think how the suns by millions fall with the Earth 

o'errun by a pygmy race — 
63 



64 Lower Broadway 

I think of the Past behind the Past: how all the 

suns have arisen in soul, 
How the souls have struggled till now at last a 

little gray crowd through a deep street rolls. 

But lo, if my flesh had sharper senses this world 

were as a glory that runs — 
Were my frail eyes strengthened with mighty 

lenses these walls were atoms storming in 

suns — 
What if my soul through the lens of love beheld 

these lives that flicker by? . . . 
Do we not all from one Birth move to one vast 

Moment when we die? 

Have we not all had some hour wild when our life 

was one with the world's love-stories? 
Have we not seen this world through a child, and 

thus are children in realms of glories? 
Have we not swung between bitter and sweet — 

home and grave and some Vision's breath? — 
There are unborn babes in this noisy street, and 

we walk on the very pavement of Death. 

Lo, the dreamed souls of Shakespeare's stories are 
but the shadows of any life — 



Lower Broadway 65 

Any woman has touched more glories as child and 

young girl, mother and wife — 
Any life, howsoever common, is hunger and love 

and the Gleam, the Gleam — 
We toil, we love — and lo, the human is making 

real some unseen Dream. 

Dream of the million aeons that rolled suns into 

worlds, worlds into Man, 
Till the ages are in our eyes that behold, our hands 

that labor, our brains that plan — 
Yea, each in this street is the Lord God risen in 

flesh to harmonize His works: 
Unwitting the motorman tracks the Vision and 

the Gleam is penned by the tired clerks. 

Though we eat and breed and take our wages as 

if to shame our spirits sublime 
We move with Power, we fruit of the ages, we 

street-lost seeds of all coming time — 
Lo, each soul has an unseen companion he holds 

in secret, against all odds — 
In thousand-foot shadows in the gray canyon a 

little gray people is hiding gods. 



THE NICKEL THEATER 

O SHAKESPEARE come and sit with us! 
Here are such theater-glories 
As you, O million-peopled Soul, had loved! For 

you told stories 
The crowds could see — yea, though the poems 

swept over their brains blind. 
So much were women and men your words you 
spoke to all mankind. 

It's a thick black room and a rough rude crowd — 

the real strong human stuff — 
A screen's before, a beam of light rules through 

the air — enough ! 
Lo, on that beam of light there darts vast hills 

and men and women. 
The screen becomes a stage; here's life, blood-red 

with the hving human ! 

In but ten minutes how we sweep the Earth, un- 
baring life. 

Here in Algiers and there in Rome — a Paris street 
— the strife 

66 



The Nickel Theater 67 

Of cowboys swinging lariat ropes — the plains, the 

peaks, the sea — 
Life cramped in one room or loosed out to all 

eternity ! 

Lo, now, behold the dead salt desert, the trail-lost 

man and wife, 
A child clutched to her breast ! They toil through 

sand, they cry for life. 
They stagger on from hill to hill — now far, now 

near — their cry 
Breaks through our hearts, their fight is ours, we 

love them as they die ! 

Yea, in ten minutes we drink Life, quintessenced 
and compact. 

Earth is our cup, we drain it dry; yea, in ten min- 
utes act 

The lives of alien people strange; the Earth grows 
small; we see 

The humanness of all souls human: all these are 
such as we ! 



68 The Nickel Theater 

O at day's end, and after toil that dragged the 

heart In the street, 
What utter glory to forget, to feel again the beat 
Of the warming heart with light and life and love's 

unearthly gleam, 
Till Dreams become our Living World, and all 

the World's a Dream ! 

Now we have lived the pain of others, now we 

have drunk their joy! 
It gives us new heroic grip upon our day's employ ! 
O Shakespeare, here Earth's dimmest brain can 

draw strength from great stories ! 
The millions grasp their heritage of Art, the 

theater-glories ! 



THE COMING OF MAY 

MAGIC Is the Spring — past thinking, past 
dreaming — it's the oldest and newest 
story — 
We smile at the ardent lovers, but share their frail 

first spoils of glory — 
Hence to the wildwood, hence to the hills, is our 

desire and yearning — 
Hence even to the city's landscape Park when 
tenuous noon is burning! 

The naked trees and the soggy lawns and the little 

hollows and pools, 
The slips of the golden hyacinth, the breeze that 

heats and cools, — 
All Earth seems like a being sublime, stirred the 

first time with soul — 
We lounge on a bench and straight we are seized, 

as a furnace clutches a coal. 



69 



70 The Coming of May 

By the flame and fire of awakening Earth, till we 
ache and blaze with big mood, 

Till our thoughts yearn out to and through the 
skies! — Yonder a blackbird, wooed, 

Half-won, hurtles over the heavens, her mate pur- 
suing, exultant, daring! 

Even this breeds heartache — it's the time of love 
— yea, all creation is pairing! 

little black ant, O miracle of body and heart and 

brain ! 

1 marvel! For if my hand slapped down, this 

miracle were slain ! 
You are life, and I, I am life, and the Earth 

swarms with thick-millionM life, 
Life throbs through all, fragile with death — its 

head laid under the knife! 

O sun-heat smiting the Earth obliquely and tem- 
pered with ice at the pole, 

And cool and hot on my cheek and stirring the 
city-slow'd floods of the soul, 

O sun-heat drawing this life from my heart and 
this life from the heart of the Earth, 



The Coming of May 71 

So that to the blue skies millions of bud-things stir 
and strain at the birth ! 



And the little black ant, like the larger black bird, 

feels the God and he builds and mates, 
And my heart Is filled with a fire — and a blending 

of mighty antagonist fates 
Bears ant and bird and beast and myself and the 

flowing stream and the Earth 
And men and women and stars and God through 

Spring's gigantic birth. 



ELLIS ISLAND 

THREE thousand miles of Atlantic seas and 
a throb that cuts the top, 
The rushed four-funneled fleeting ship, that, with- 
out curb or stop, 
Hurls on, while Earth ten times rolls round till, 

under morning stars 
She breasts the mist of a continent and slows at 
the groaning bars ! 

And lo, three-layered Humanity in her steerage 

bunks asleep. 
Rising at Dawn and crowding aft, and in the 

infinite sweep 
Of gray — the sea, the sky — see dim, dream- 

greatened and gigantic, 
America, America, uprisen from the Atlantic I 

Swift on dead centuries of faces a sun flames, ere 

the Sun 
Blows the blue bubble of the heavens vast — yea, 

flaming, one by one, 

72 



Ellis Island 73 

These faces are a psalm to God — a morning hymn 

— the sea, 
The sky, the land are a living Temple with a 

thousand Souls set free. 

Swing then the uplifted, crowded people in trans- 
port to our Isle — 

Morning with strong sun and sweet gales and the 
Bay's yeasty mile. 

Like hands holds forth a glorious City — her 
smoke's sky-swimming shoals. 

Her flight of cliffs, her range of peaks all honey- 
combed with Souls! 

O come through the Ellis Island Gates — O rush 

the swift routine. 
Sweep to new birth on a planet new — for lo, at 

the wire screen 
Of the waiting cage, the Americans clutch — yea, 

as starved people stare. 
Watching your alien faces pass to see if one be 

there. 

Yonder old trembling man three hours has stood ! 
Through the shuffling crowd 



74 Ellis Island 

A pink-shawled withered old woman shambles 

over her baggage bowed; 
He pales; he cries her name; she bursts into his 

arms; the years 
Melt back into the glory of youth, still seen 

through blinding tears. 

Old Woman — strong girls, swart men, soft babes 

— you hordes across-seas hurled, 
O pioneers, as one dares Death, you dare a great 

new World ! 
You bring strong blood, and Faith and Love, stout 

hearts and homely traits — 
What shall our country do with you — deal out 

what Doohis, what Fates? 

Shall we judge by your alien ways, and lose the 

gifts that are all your own? 
Or shall we rise to grander heights than Earth has 

ever known? 
Yea, shall we seize on you with love, far-building 

on your trust? 
Are we great enough to swing to God what Europe 

trailed in dust? 



Ellis Island 7$ 

O our America, O Mother, great have you been, 

our hearts 
Are yours, our faith and love are yours — great 

are your trades and arts. 
Your Men — fail not! Earth looks to you, her 

vast Experiment-Station 
To test if souls may be borne to God in the arms 

of a Mother-Nation! 

Shun not the Mission! Fearless, fearless mother 

Earth's mightiest race — 
Yea, seize your flashing stars and stripes and 

stamp across the face 
That word, the strongest in our tongue, that sums 

the grain of sod. 
The skies thick-sunned, the Earth, the Soul, our 

country — the word ''God!" 



THE HOME COMING 

July, 1905 

TWINNED with our star-splashed, blood- 
barred flag, born from the same world- 
womb, 
Lay them together, America, together in one tomb. 
So did he swear in the years when his soul saw 

earth through human eyes — 
Give him his great wish, give him his wish, be- 
neath American skies. 
Bring him back to the hearts that are throbbing 

because his great heart beat. 
Bring him back, bring Paul Jones back, and lay 
him at our feet. 
(We hear the swift ship, swift ship, pulse 

along her singing track — 
And O, heart, throb ! America, Paul Jones 
is coming back!) 

His dead form thrills to the engine's pulse, his 
dead ear harks the salute. 

And while a land, man-mighty exults, his lips can- 
not be mute; 

76 



The Home Coming 77 

His old gun-thunder re-echoes round, his bleeding 

crew stand forth, 
And the Richard fights the Serapis in the smoke of 

a sunless North; 
He walks the deck, he handles the guns, he leads 

the assault, he bleeds — 
Through smoke and flame the great ship runs, 

alive with deathless deeds. 
(We hear those great deeds, great deeds echo, 

beneath the shrouds of black — 
And O, heart, throb! America, Paul Jones 

is coming back!) 

Lo, where the great Sea-Captain fought — our 

fighter who never failed — 
Lo, on the furious, storming skies our flying colors 

were nailed, 
Our free flag followed around the world our first 

great Captain-Sailor, 
And it blossomed from mast to mast till it blew 

from warship, greyhound, and trailer. 
His was the day of the sailing ship, now bring him 

back in steam. 
Let him pulse to a nation that rushes on to live his 

deepest dream, 



yS The Home Coming 

That sits in power and moulds her sons and read- 
justs the earth, 
That makes all men as masters free to grow in 

manly worth, 
That spines the great globe with those nerves that 

make of her the Heart, 
So that the Earth is small and serves as servant to 

her art. 
O, bring him back to a great new land, that yet is 

but the old, 
And let our flags of joy be flung while funeral bells 

are tolled. 
(We hear the slow ship, slow ship, sob along 

her midnight track — 
And O, heart, throb! America, Paul Jones 

is coming back!) 

O, who loves not his country so deeply and so dear 
He feels he must be buried in the great, great 

graves of her? 
O, pines upon our mountains, O, rocks upon our 

shore. 
His dust shall mingle with your dust, forever, ever 

more. 



The Home Coming 79 

His dust in France, strange-tongued, lay far and 

far from home, 
But his Ghost has moved our nation and now his 

dust shall come, 
And his dust shall serve as a symbol, and his spirit 

shall work in our souls 
Till the whole world is America and one between 

the poles. 
(We see the dead dust, dead dust shrouded, 

deep, deep in black — 
And O, heart, throb, America, Paul Jones is 

coming back.) 



THE EXCURSION BOAT 

WE split the running seas apart, 
We storm into the roaring gale — 
Storm-music shakes the mighty heart, 

Our fingers tremble on the rail. 
The long ship pulses to her rods. 

Her pennants fly, she takes the seas 
As if she bore a thousand gods 
To new Hesperides ! 

The great new skies come up and go, 

The lurching sun far-flaming rolls, 
We race the Atlantic's foaming flow, 

And oh, we are a thousand Souls, 
A thousand Souls with godlike worth — 

We own these seas, we own these skies — 
Our heritage is all the Earth — 

We seize it with our eyes ! 

O sad Italian at the 'cello, 

O dreaming boy with violin, 
Sea-wind and ship-throb purge and mellow 

The fingering false, the scrawnv din — 
80 



The Excursion Boat 8 1 

Your music leads us on the seas, 

A wandering Voice, a flying fire, 

A Spirit pouring through the breeze 
All that our hearts desire ! 



Lo, when we slipped with whistle-shriek 

Easily from the barren dock. 
And down the river steamed to seek 

Ocean's salt surge and roaring shock. 
And upward in a golden haze 

The City took her massive flight. 
Her windows silverM with sun-rays. 

Her towers, peaks of light — 

How pitiable the human faces — 

The worrying lines, the haunted eyes- 
Earth's street-yoked labor-blasted races. 

The steel Machine's blood sacrifice — 
The Mother care-worn with her child. 

The Father hunted by To-morrow, 
O boatload groaning with your wild 

Women and Men of Sorrow! 



82 The Excursion Boat 

But lo, the spindrift lashed and seethed, 

And lo, the health of sea and earth 

Like arms snatched up these Souls, and 

breathed 
Through them the flame of second 
birth — 
And now on board a fire rolls — 

The boat is as a blast from God 
Shrilling Man's Resurrection: Souls 
Burst from the broken clod ! 



IMMIGRANTS IN THE BAY 

NEW waked from a night on the seas 
With bright stars ghttering, 
New waked by a morning breeze 

And land-birds twittering 
Sweet, in the sudden-seen green 

Of a glorious dawn, 
We come, freed fresh and hands clean 
Of the Old World gone ! 

Out of the myths and the mysteries 

Age-old, enslaving. 
Out of the world's bloody histories, — 

Filled with new craving 
We have come, pioneers from afar 

To the New World's gates — 
Your beacon our fixed North Star, 

O Union of States ! 

Our eyes are fresh with bright morning, 

And blue skies enormous, 
And the land In the new light adorning 

In fires that warm us, 
83 



84 Immigrants in the Bay 

Flames of fresh foliage and frondage 
That thrill our sea-eyes — 

We are freed, freed from blood-bondage 
In New Earth and New Skies ! 



And behold, what before unbeholden 

Slow slipped on our gaze, 
Yonder city wrought of the golden 

Sunrise and haze — 
Her golden hair in the sunward 

Heavens, and her palms 
Calling us to her, as onward 

We rush to her arms! 



O ramparts raised up colossal, 

World-promontory ! 
Our hearts, of the Old Earth fossil. 

Are broken in glory — 
Mistress of Continents, Woman 

Of the New World^s Birth- 
Beautiful! drawing all human 

Hearts from all Earth ! 



Immigrants in the Bay 85 

Who could withstand her voice tender 

With hints of heart's duty — 
Who could resist her bright splendor, 

Her alluring beauty? 
Thanks to the gods that grant us 

Her sons to be ! — 
This is the Lost Atlantis, 

Raised from the sea. 



HOME, AFTER WORK 

DYNAMO-MUSIC all day 
Throbbing its volts through the brain- 
Throbbing its dirges of Pain, 
Its music of world-work and strain, 
Dying and dying away 
When twilight is gray! 

Hoofs and voices and wheels, 

Song of a city in toil, 

Song of incessant turmoil. 

Hunt of the golden spoil. 
Music that sways and reels, 
Music one hears not, but feels ! 

O glancing vision of glories. 

Streets and crowds and the calls, 
Streets and crowds and the halls, 
The sun-flashing windowed walls, 

Man-builded, stories on stories. 

Sublime promontories! 



86 



Home, After Work 87 

And now at home in my chair 

The golden day pours Hke a sea 
Ever and ever on me, 
Touched with eternity, 

O, swims in the evening air, 

Vision and glory rare ! 

And Peace floats into the heart, — 

All day in the crowd I was hurled, 
By the crowd was my Soul unfurled, 
I helped in the work of the world, 

I played my part, my part — 

O power of Peace in the heart, 

Eternal peace in the heart! 



PAIN 

EARTH, with her million swirling whirlwinds 
of love and passion and lust, 
Earth, with her storms of billions of faces, souls 

In a cyclone of dust — 
What does this Comedy-Tragedy mean? I cross 

your path, I, man. 
You, woman, our lives thenceforth entwine — Is It 
chance, it Is God, Is It plan? 

I am lost In a column of a human hundred, sucked 

streaming In the storm. 
Torrents of Women and Men forever pouring In 

swarm beyond swarm — 
Whence Is the drift, whither the flood? Through 

the millions of years that ran 
Since Earth was fire, was I borne on the tide that 

casts me up now, a man? 

I have brain, I have heart, and I think I have soul : 

this world never lets me alone — 
I must love and hate and scheme and sweat blood: 

I must loose my lusts and atone — 



am 



89 



Men, women, sweet children drift round and 
round, a raging blizzard of life, — 

How they draw my soul! — it's my son, it's my 
friend, my mother, my brother, my wife. 



And my soul craves down through my flesh for 

food and pleasure and vice and love — 
Lo, you large stars in the Night's hand, worlds 

aloft, worlds, worlds above, 
O suns, suns, suns, like our human storm, pouring 

through space with Earth — 
Lusts fade, when I think how among these stars 

my mother cried at my birth. 



I have risen from ape on this Earth that is swal- 
lowed in the whirling storm of stars. 

Those million-million oceans of fire, that rain 
through heaven like chars 

Of kindled sparks. And my ancestry through the 
million years of man 

Is bloody-black with crime and hate, with Cain's 
and Judas' ban. 



90 Pain 

Where's the escape ? Where is there hope ? The 

midnight sounds me this riddle. 
How came I here, just now, aHve, writing, yea In 

the middle 
Of a rhyme, with ink and pen and paper? Do I 

know that I do not dream — 
That I live, that I truly am man — and man?' . . . 

What driftwood on what stream? 

you gates of the Lord opened at night, O you 

merciful gates of the Lord ! 

1 have toiled, I have suffered, yea, I have known 

Pain, Pain that has cut the heart's cord! 
Yea, Pain Is life's sharpest Reality! And even 

now scorched by the rod 
Of Pain, truth flashes: this moment bares Soul — 

and drowning doubt — brings God. 



THE WORLD-HOME 

I AM at home In the glorying ocean where the 
waves put in Hke mighty swimmers — 
I am at home in the strange sea-motion of streets 

where no horizon glimmers — 
And were I plunged in the deepest mine, after a 

season of blackness blind, 
There would I find all things divine and be at 
home with earth and my kind. 

And were I lifted by aeroplane like a scahng eagle 

nearing the sun 
The flowing skies were my domain and I with the 

upper air were one — 
For the spirit of man is bone of the bone and soul 

of the soul of all that there is — 
Wherever he is he finds his own, his hell of pain, 

his heaven of bliss ! 

For living and breathing are sun and earth, sand- 
grain and soul, and brother and brother 

They mix and mingle through birth and birth, and 
pour and change into one another — 
91 



92 The World-Home 

All of the powers of all of the skies ebb and flow 

through the soul of man, 
And the suns are altered by human cries, sped by 

our blessing, checked by our ban. 

In the thick-eddying swim and push of the million- 
million facts of the world 

Breathes the glorious — caught in the rush of some- 
thing wild is my being hurled — 

Could I but reach to my inner height, could I but 
use the power in me, 

I could be as the sun in light and in my might as 
the heaving sea. 



A SONG OF LABOR 

A DREAM Is on the people, 
A light, not flame light, falls 
Upon great broken faces. 

These ruined human walls, 
And at the master moment 

Beyond the soul breaks sod, 
And angels in the heart's core 
Sing gloriously of God. 

In deeds that make men brothers. 

In acts that give us soul, 
Those destinies are hidden 

That sweep us to the goal, 
But we, as gods, are dreamers. 

And we, as angels, dream. 
We little apes with visions 

That are not what we seem ! 

O heart of Man, what glories 
Have never come to pass, 

The dream that never wakened. 
The love that never was — 

93 



94 ^ Song of Labor 

The good, the great, the labor- 
O save the ways half-trod 

Our hves flow on corrupted 
Into the hfe of God. 



If, gazing on dead faces, 

Our grief Is too, too wild, 
If hearts of tender mothers 

Are broken on a child, 
O what might be that anguish 

In God, who sees unfurled 
Man's evil, for His creature 

Is child of all the world I 



O draggled souls, O demons, 

O human sharks and snakes, 
Free fight of savage devils, 

O beast that in us wakes. 
We, drunk with teeming power. 

Have shaken the firm earth 
Until her heart is rotten 

And lost to love and mirth. 



A Song of Labor 95 

But One has seen our wildness 

And over us are shed 
Dreams, that lead forth our labor, 

Ghosts, that divulge our dead, 
A pity, that Is saving. 

The tears, that make us pure. 
And love, that In great hours 

To God shall make us sure. 



O what shall bring the morning 

Of dreams that rush In deed, 
The workshop thronged with workmen 

Handling the living need? 
O sweat of brow scarce-purposed 

In a never dreamed of quest I 
O hearts that never tire ! 

O hands that never rest I 



THE HUMAN DEAD 

OUR human world 
Deepens into the world divine of death, 
The human soul deepens and is unfurled 
At the last gasp of breath. 

We leave the Earth 

As if we turned the corner of a street, 
And there emerging through the dawn of birth 

Old human souls we meet. 

And do not these, 

These souls lean back and whisper through 
our sky? 
Human are the dead, human as Socrates, 

Human even as I. 

Not In the morn 

In songs of sunrise come their voices near. 
But In a heart that humbled is and torn 

There they sing sweet and clear. 

For by suns kissed 

And out of utter Hght they us behold, 
Knowing we are but strugglers m the mist 

And sorrowers In the mold. 
96 



The Human Dead 97 

And all the pain 

And all the groplngs and the loves of Earth 
Return upon them like wood-smells in rain 

Calling them to our hearth. 

For here they wrought, 

Here they achieved and here was born the 
child- 
Nay, they were children here themselves and 
sought 
Their Mothers with hearts wild. 

They knew the bliss 

Of old Spring nights when in the rainy grove 
Wet lilacs led them, boy and girl, to kiss 

The first kiss of first love. 

They knew divine 

Autumn-gray wildernesses wild with storm 
When a great sea-roar goes from pine to pine 

And the cabin light glows warm. 

They knew the street 

Where through the sunset gold a people press 
Homeward, and in the doorway is the sweet 

Wife in young loveliness. 

7 



98 The Human Dead 

Or household bloom 

And glory when the mother bathes the child, 
And laughter leaps in the low darkened room 

And the world is young and wild. 

Do the dead dream 

Of summer nights beside a sea of foam? 
Or see old morning lift its crimson gleam? 

Do they remember home ? 

All little things 

Come back to them among the million suns 
And they draw down — their love being touched 
with wings — 

To their lost little ones. 

They see our strife, 

They see our faces groping from above — 
They hear our white-hot human cry for life, 

Our divine cry for love. 

And they are human 

And we divine: and so we speak each other, 
Man unto man and woman unto woman 

And children unto Mother. 



MOUNTAINTOP 

The beauties of the woodland tempt us on 
To wilder beauties still : but in the night 

The silver moon rains mellow light upon 

The forest floor in splashes of dim white: 
And all seems like a web of dark and bright, 

Like a dark cell lit with a flickering luster, 
And through the grating hard, 

A sight of constellations In a cluster. 

Dimmed by the flaunting moon, outmastered 
and outstarred. 



The path goes winding through this mazy jail 

Up the wide steep of rocks and gnarled roots, 

Our lanterns sparkle as we take the trail, 

And at the blinding sight the wood-owl hoots. 
But softer than the sound of failing flutes 

The far off water and the dying wind, — 
The nation of leaves 

Dipped in a silver sea, before, behind. 

Like a great surging ocean, mingles and 
swells and heaves. 

9^ 



100 Mountaintop 

In all the stillness not a lone bird's warble 

The teeming wilderness with song endows, 

The tree trunks stand like pillars of white marble 
Beneath the garland of the tangled boughs, 
The wind dips deep and murmurs as it soughs 

Through the thick woodland, and the moving 
stream 

Lingers without a tune, 

And earth and heaven lie as in a dream 

Silvered and softened by a waning moon. 

The crumbling hours wear with our toil — 

It seems forever In this prison dark 
We are to be pent up : In this thick coil 

Forever to be aiming at a mark 

Forever further placed, — when lo, and hark I 
The roaring gale over the mighty peak, 

The far-flung snatch of sky, 
The sheer slant of the weathered rocks, the bleak, 

PIne-poInted top ahead, — and like a hare we 
fly. 

Then through a cut where the wide sky is clear 
A sudden hint of color: then a shout 



Mountaintop lOi 

Anc we go bounding like a man in fear 

Up the steep rocks and the high peak's re- 
doubt, 
And sudden with a leap we all swing out 
Upon the very peak and promontory, 

And such a burst of view, 
And such an exultation and a glory. 

And such a breath of freedom, as yet, we 
never drew. 

Vision afar, untouched, untongueable ! 

Words are insipid in the face of this. 
The wild exhilaration makes us able 

Only to know and feel unbounded bliss, 

To stand before the gale's intrepid kiss 
With almost bursting and exultant breast — 

Here the wild eagle swoops 
Straight Into space from his cliff-clinging nest — 

Here the wind blows forever hope In the 
heart that droops. 

All of the world unrolls before our eyes, 

Ranges on ranges of far-flinging peaks 
Hued with dull purple : In the eastern skies 



I02 Mountaintop 

Hugging the hills the pink and ruddy streaks 
Of early dawn: the stricken-sick moon seeks 
Its bed: and what a tinted stretch of space, 

Mountains and silver lakes, 
Soft sleeping mist upon the foothills' face, 

As through the sky the day with hosts of 
color breaks. 

The dawn is waking like an opening eye 

Half dazzled by the color that outspreads, 

The splendid scarlet streamers in the sky 

Battle the purple the hill-shadow sheds — 
Between, the silver lakes locked in their beds. 

And misty hills, Immersed, unreal and strange — 
When like a flashing gun 

A snake of golden fire gilds the range, 

A fringe of running gold, and like a flame, 
the sun. 

Oh transformation of the sky and earth ! 

The undulating gray-green, miles and miles, 

Blows off its mist as In a burst of mirth. 

The chilly water down the bald defiles 
Glitters and sparkles: the huge granite piles 



Mountaintop 103 

Stand In their nudeness, rugged, unconfined, 

But for close-clinging streaks 
Of hardy balsams weathering the wind, 

Above the broadly flung, vast ocean of the 
peaks. 

An ocean which shall stand forever off — 

Yet are the mountains the high billows and 
waves 
Rolling forever onward : In their trough 

Ripples the mighty forest : the wind raves 
But still the sea stands off, nor ever laves 
The elemental rock which, solid, rears 
High up its head sublime. 
All silent through the mighty wash of years. 

Swept by the clouds and wind, defying storm 
and time. 

Now seem we on the apex of a planet 

With all the earth's side In Its element. 

Showing Its bonework of washed, rusty granite, 
Its mighty gulfs making a yawning rent 
In the wide green: and In the whole space 
pent 



104 Mountaintop 

The winds of all the earth, which, with a wail 

Over the peaks are hurled. 
And bare trees stripped stark nude by the shrill 
gale 
Stand like rude signal towers to speak another 
world. 

Here's liberty, here's liberty at last. 

We've left humanity in chains beneath. 
Feelings of freedom sweep us like a blast. 

We shake off custom like a withered wreath. 
We dance, we sing, we play, we live, we 
breathe. 
Even the masters of ourselves are we — 

Blow on, wild wind, blow on. 
Shrill courier of boundless liberty. 

We are alone, and bonds, wrought by man- 
kind, are gone. 

Immensity of space forever rolling, 

Immensity of wind forever roaring. 

Great universe, whose mighty power controlling 
Our eager feet, yet frees us — we are pouring 
Our souls to you, and our wild spirits soaring 



Mountaintop 105 

Seem of the nature of creations glorious — 

Like a new deity 
We sing and shout with hearts victorious 

Upon the wind through space, paeans of 
liberty ! 



ROOSEVELT 

March 4, 1909 

MARCH winds blowing all wild — 
And whirling heavens through blue pools 
spill 
Shine of the sun, and a romping child 
Flies a red kite on a hill — 
The boy-god's hair Is streaming — 
He tugs at the string — 
And the vast landscape dreaming 
Beats up the heavens a-wing — 
The young gods of Greece 
Knew not such ecstasies — 
You boy, I feel your eager American blood 
Sweep a reddened flood 
Glorying through my heart — 
You boy, I see in you the American nation — 
The Boy-Land of the Earth 
Set by the seas apart 

And laughing over prairies In his mirth — 
For America Is youth, joy, glory, exultation I 

Exultation ! 

The shine of the sun breaks transitory 

106 



Roosevelt 107 

On a glittering people, a gleaming nation — 

But through this day a glory 

Glides — 

But in our heart a glory 

Abides ! 

And our wild March joy 

Is at its topmost span, 

For we know that this Leader that seems like a 

Man, 
This Servant in our employ, 
Is only our Biggest Boy. 

"Come down," we say, "a People changes hands — 
And forty-six young lands 
Call you down to the common streets of men. 
And bid you romp in the crowd again ! 
Have you not flown your red kite night and day? 
Have we not laughed with you and felt the sway 
Of Fatherhood to see you have your way? 
For eight years were you not — America !" 

O Biggest Boy, 

We will forget your faults (are they not racy of 

youth?) 
And let our American joy 



io8 Roosevelt 

Skim off the lies of the Soul and drink of the truth. 

Why must we to the living 

Be unforgiving 

Of faults? 

Why wait till Death exalts? 

For this man was uncommon 

In that he was so human — 

So like us — variable as human weather — 

Vast with our wide-horizon'd soil — 

Merely eighty millions put together 

In one prank — dream — joy — jubilation — toil! 

To Motherhood he was a Mother — 

To Brotherhood a Brother — 

He was us all — spirit and heart and limb — 

He could not exhaust his power — he could not 

tire — 
Our passions fought in him, our dreams took fire 
In him, our laughter woke in him ! 

Brother-Boy, yet you were common! 
No genius added god to the frail human ! 
Therefore you turned to your Soul, and called on 
Power — 



Roosevelt 109 

The Power that connects with every Soul — 

By stress of divine sweat hour by hour 

You made the inner Mightiness unroll — 

You drew strength to your flesh, your heart, your 

brain 
And by undreamable pain 
Became that all that any man may be. 
The Superman in common humanity ! 
And now you are America's hope: for you 
Proved what common man may do. 

When pansy, daisy and the wild violet 
In cool of the morning shall be splattered wet, 
When bluebird, blackbird, redbird so shall sing 
That flames of love shall shake the blossomy 

boughs. 
And the young human baby laugh in the city house, 
When March with sun and wind leads in the 

Spring 
With trailing briers 
And golden fires — 

What if the blue heavens arch a happier Earth 
Because of you? 

What if all America lies bathed in heaven anew 
And hallowed with new birth? 



no Roosevelt 

Not only babies, birds, and beasts, and buds, 

And the breaking of the ice-locked floods, 

And the glory of green on hills that rest and on 

seas that roll — 
But a new birth of Freedom and the Soul? 

Lincoln's work was never done — 

Slavery to slavery 

Pendulates Democracy — 

Forever is our Freedom to be won — 

Even while the torn war-flags flew victorious 

On Richmond and the bleeding States assembled, 

And the gray heart of Lincoln leaped and was 

glorious. 
His worn soul trembled 
For his children's land — 
He saw the continent-shadow of a hand 
Steal forth to gild the landscape and the street — 
He saw the cities dimmed with golden sand, 
And cyclone on the prairied corn and wheat — 
Deep down he looked in the dark abysm 
Of smoking Industrialism ! 

Wild is March weather ! 
Mass we together. 



Roosevelt iii 

A people once more on the slant that slopes 

Into the sunrise: for our lariat ropes 

Have curled about the traitors: they are low: 

And once again we go 

Singing together 

In wild March weather! 

Up from our hearts roll laughing tributes of joy 

That in our highest American, 

That in this jubilant Boy 

The new Times found their Man ! 

They found their Man! He met the invasion 

Of traitorous vices — 

He did not wait — he made his Occasion — 

He wrought a Crisis ! 

He poured his heart out warm 

Till we arose with his heat 

And shook the cities with storm 

And with panic the street! 

And what if the Future chalk 

This Fame above Time's flood! 

"He forced a fight of talk 

To shun a fight of blood?" 

Boy-Brother, till our people cease 

You shall be the Warrior of Peace — 



112 Roosevelt 

No victor of a Gettysburg, no Grant, 

No Bonaparte crippling the World with craze — 

But the American who saves, not slays ! 

So let the March sun slant 

Into his setting splendors and far-roll 

This day a glory round this common Soul 

Until a people see 

That he eternally shall be 

One of America's Three ! 

One with Lincoln, and one 

With Washington! 

March winds blowing all wild — 

And blessings on our eldest child! 

Boy, how can we help but love you ? 

You erring, daring, happy Soul! 

Let our love about you roll 

And our blessing be above you ! 

Romp once again! and may your life 

Be as a dying strife — 

And may your winter move through golden days 

In circles of bright praise — 

A harvest world, a World of Friends — 

And when the long earth-history ends 



Roosevelt 113 

May you wing out to Lincoln, not apart, 

But through a mighty People's heart — 

A living People's heart! 

We will be great, and to the living 

Give love 

And be forgiving — 

We will be great and rise above 

The mocking Past, letting no Future claim 

This Man who knew our people for his Mother: 

Living, we give him Fame, 

Living, we hail him Brother. 



THE MARRIAGE-HYMN 

SPIRIT of April, spirit of Spring, 
Spirit of unborn corn on the upland slopes, 
Spirit of red-birds dreaming on boughs a-swing, 
Spirit of human hopes ! 
This is your time of the year — 
This is your time : and two by two they come. 
Earth's lovers with their alien hearts drawn 

near. 
And lips that now, at last, no longer may be dumb. 

Love's glory and fire 
Are on the Earth — 
And immortal desire 
Has birth — 

The man and the woman 
Toward each other must move, 
And be divine-human 
In love — 

They may laugh under green of the boughs, 
They may dance over freshening grass — 
But out of the sun, and out of the meadow, 
Slowly they come to the shadow — 

114 



The Marriage -Hymn 115 

Softly they creep from their youth's dream-house, 
Softly into the world they pass — 
Under the crown of the marriage-bower 
They step: and Love from this great hour 
Has no more, nevermore, its April-splendor, 
And no more, nevermore, its fiery glory — 
But it becomes a thing more human, tender. 
That life's low daily deeds may store youth's lost 
love-story ! 

This is the sadness of life: 

But this is the gladness of life: 

That nothing dies in the heart, save to make ampler 

room 
For vaster glories and more glorious bloom ! 

Then shall she, the woman-wife, 

Make the four-walls of a dwelling 
Hallowed with the light of life. 

And a love, intense, up-welling, 
Overflowing through her home. 

Where a man may be content, 
Where the peace of God may come. 

Where a lifetime may be spent! 



Ii6 The Marriage-Hymn 

And the man, far-toiling through the world, 

In the sweat and stress of mighty deeds, 

By life's struggle and life's storm unfurled, 

Shall return more than a heart that bleeds — 

Yea, shall bring the breath of the world 

Into his home — 

Broadening its depths with currents of knowledge 

hurled 
Under the shallow foam! 

And the two together — may they know, 

O may they know that love cannot suffice : 

Deeper than this their daring hearts must go: 

A perfect marriage is self-sacrifice ! 

May this sweet marriage lead, if to no goals 

Of grandeur, to that goal that all may touch : 

That human goal that means so much : 

Purer hearts and stronger souls ! 

And may they look upon each other 

Even as a perfect mother 

Looks upon her perfect child : 

Not as a wood-flower, vagrant-wild, 

But as a possibility, 

A bud of immortality. 



The Marriage -Hymn 117 

A Soul to be unfurled 

To its bloom In the deep world ! 

So may they shape each other, this man and 

woman, 
Into pure souls more human. 
Into diviner souls — 

That progress may go on through all of life, 
That at the end of their brief human strife, 
Still may they cry: **To-morrow, seek new goals!" 

Ah, that to-night 

Something might open doors in their deep hearts, 

And let the light 

Of God stream in: that their love-story. 

Sweeter than all human arts, 

Might be transmuted to eternal glory; 

That all their life. 

This husband and his wife 

Might go on greatening in power of love. 

Might go on broadening their love, until 

It overflows their home and sends its thrill 

Into the crying world where millions move 

Through ways of darkness, crying for the light ! 

So might these two be touched with Infinite 



Ii8 The Marriage -Hymn 

And everlasting love — 
So might their marriage be a glory greater 
Than might or riches; yea, a glory above 
All, save the white light of the World-Creator ! 



THE DEEPS 

THE room Is black, the moon is low, 
The night is late, and fast asleep 
Lies she whom all my heart loves so, 
But I lie open to the Deep. 

The earth Is rolling us to God, 

The sandstorm of the stars is swept 
By His breath : in a small earth's sod 
I lie soul open, safely kept. 

Lo, she who lies there fast asleep. 

Her breathing low, her mind a blank, 

What is she ? and what currents sweep 
Her fast away from life's last bank? 

The moon is gone, the room is black, 

I lie soul open to the Deep — 
O never known, yet loved — I lack. 

Heart, you ! — Awake, you must not sleep. 



"9 



THE CRY OF MAN 

WHAT roar as of breaking of Oceans, what 
cry as of seas on the iron-clanging coasts ? 
Lo, I peer through an acre of factory-sheds, I see 

in the blackness thin ghosts 
With white faces a-flutter: a thousand machines 

throb, thunder and worry and whirl — 
Only one Soul may I see : a great sunbeam splashes 
the face of a girl. 

Not she a mere scarecrow that wags on a cornfield, 
rag-wrapped, bone-fingered, loose-shod. 

For I see by the agonized whites of her eyes a ter- 
rible thirsting for God, 

I see by her lips a cry for the Life — O God, I 
could gather her in. 

Warm her with love, bear her ofF to the hills, and 
purge her of Pain and of Sin ! 

Could I bear this, were you mine, O you child? 
Lo, as mine, are you sacred, as mine, you are 
Soul! 

120 



The Cry of Man I2i 

O, through you I reach out to God again, I see 

far-flashing the Goal 
Of the rolling ages, the wild flight of Souls, the 

ages' vast Millions downtrod 
With dust in their mouths crying for the Lord, in 

the search eternal for God! 

O, Vision of the Ages pouring forth Millions, O 

Vision of the Ages' Soul Flight, 
Dropped from God's hand, winging over Earth, 

till caught by the tides of the Night, 
Homing to the Lord by quick millions in Death — 

still, still through the great flight rolls 
Revelation from God — the pouring of fire — the 

rush to new heights by all Souls ! 

For Souls that taste dust thirst for the Lord: in 

the sand-grain the pent Soul bursts. 
Is a life-cell; breaks on, it Is sponge; works out 

higher, is reptile ; sees sunlight, and thirsts 
More after God up through tiger, through ape; 

till the Soul through its simian ban 
Strains for a flight to the stars, the roll'd Heavens, 

and bursts into glory of man! 



122 The Cry of Man 

But, lo, we are half-Souls, dust-tasters — our cry is 

the cry eternal for God, 
So strong that a Christ breaks through, and a 

Lincoln; and we of the dust, one with sod. 
Born in an age of dust, lo, through such souls as 

even you, world-broken Girl, 
See the Light, thirst anew ; the last Visions of Ages 

on our eyes like new fight-flags unfurl! 

Plato foretold it, Dante has sung it, Lincoln has 

lived it — our Souls 
Know if they struggled but through a thin film 

they would burst twenty worlds toward our 

Goals — 
A film ! Yet a change as from Caesar to Christ ! 

The new great upper air 
Blows all about us — we have but to rise one inch 

of the Soul to be there ! 

What new worlds? Oh, our brains, they may 
feel, but are blind! Our passion for God, 
that alone 

Charts the unpioneered Plain — that alone is a Sun 
on the unblazed Unknown! 



The Cry of Man 123 

O my heart, be content with the fire of God— the 

fire that staggered and leapt 
Crying in the Democracies— flames by which 

worlds of the God-thirsting millions were 

swept 1 

Yea, brain-fragments alone glimmer and vanish 
but we, we are human, our hands 

Must build Temples even from the straw, from 
the stubble, pile-spiked in the sea's rushing 

sands ! 
Then how word our Vision? That Christ lived 

the Real : that we live the Unreal, and must 
By our thirst, seek Realities: blowing from the 

world, from our planet, an Age of the Dustl 

For we know, O you Child, that your Want is our 

Sin; that the wild Excess that but gluts 
Our Souls beyond God, is a Sin; either way the 

Door of Eternity shuts. 
We are closed in with dust : Excess, yea, Excess is 

the lie we must meet with world-shock — 
We must build life anew on the Rock of the Real 

—the Rock of the Real— the Christ-Rock! 



124 T^he Cry of Man 

O Child, we must train you in godhood, and build 

a great Home and a Love for your Life — 
We must give you a Faith; you must labor with 

joy: real woman, real mother, real wife! — 
For Earth's but our cradle — there are stars for 

our feet — world to world cries the flying 

Ideal— 
That which prepares us for Death, that alone, 

O that alone is the Real ! 

Which having, then shall our tears be dried? No, 

they shall lay the road's dust on to death I 
Still lives the ancient strange struggle of the Soul, 

still walk with us Cain and Macbeth, 
Still Judas and Nero ! — O God, shall forever drag 

the great Soul on the Earth 
Building, with blows of Pain, gods, his young 

gods, till Death flare, the last Fire-Birth! 

Neither shall glory sit at our tables and circle us 

gliding in cars. 
Neither shall Pleasure be tasted unpaid for — ^but 

Earth shall roll among stars 
As of old with the terrible Cry of Man — God's 

infant cradle-swung 



The Cry of Man 125 

From the Sun and crying he knows not why till 
Death's sleep-chant has been sung. 

O vast troubled heart of the human, forever, for- 
ever shall hunger be yours, 

David shall brood there, Hamlet shall darken, and 
Joan, with the Faith that endures 

The blaze of the fagots, shall lead you on Visions 
— Visions which found shall half-break. 

Glass in your grasp, and fingers shall bleed, and 
the heart eternally ache! 

One step alone in a thousand years toward God 

is all we can climb, 
But oh, at the next step, lo, we shall find an Earth 

among new skies sublime, 
Where all men are toiling, where all men are 

sunned by the Chance of touching the Peak, 
Of struggling out a Soul, of lifting into God — O, 

the Chance, the Chance but to Seek ! 

To Seek ! Not be bound and doomed in the dust ! 

And the Seekers, the Millions, far-lifting 
In the dim new ages, we know they shall fail — 

some crushed, some self-lost, some drifting 



126 The Cry of Man 

Back down the slopes — but the Chance shall be 
theirs, and ten thousand touching the Sun 

Shall pull the race upwards to the City of Broth- 
ers, till on Earth God's will be done! 

Till our streets shall be sunned with the joy of 

children, and our shops be busy with men 
Toiling together great ends of the Earth, and our 

homes be hallowed again 
With the Mother, the Child! Till our Schools 

shape Souls for an Earth-life ending in skies — 
Till we know that a Soul is a Soul, and as such is 

holy before our eyes ! 

Then put off the coward — live with the Vision! 

Let me go to my work in the morning 
With fire of God, let me strike in the open, let 

me cry, cry aloud the Age dawning — 
Let my life be Real — faith in my heart! My 

Eternity hangs on this day — 
God in me dies or leaps godward as I thunder my 

yea or my nay ! 



THE JEWS 

THEY are the pioneering race that have blazed 
their trail through peoples wild — 
They have staggered with bloody face but the per- 
fect trust of a little child — 
Struck to the ground they up-groped again, and 

though their intellect soaring thrust 
Like flame through the fog of alien men, they 
sweated like God in the dust of dust. 

With deep hearts breaking with David's glory, 
with great brains flashing Mosaic law. 

These eldest sons of man's tragic story — they that 
have dwelt in the shadow of awe — 

Stooped to the menial ghetto labor and picked 
the rags from the ashman's can — 

And then trudged home and neighbor with neigh- 
bor rolled to the Lord the psalm of man. 

The wild mob gathered and shattered the human 
out of their very souls with pain, 

The white-haired father was torn and the woman 
spoiled of the mother by lust insane, 

X27 



128 The Jews 

Yet In the back street four flights up, after the 
blood and the flame had passed, 

They gathered and offered to God a cup of the 
love that death cannot outlast. 

Crowded they shared between rich and poor, food 

and shelter, and touch and speech. 
Crowded they made their day's joy sure by love 

that grappled them each to each — 
Democrats they who loved to roam through crowds 

and mingle with one another — 
Yet they were heart and soul of Home with little 

children and father and mother. 

Come you now seasoned by pain and sorrow, 

mighty minions of Israel? 
Wide are the gates of to-day and to-morrow — 

where shall you labor? where shall you dwell? 
Where? In the front. In the struggle and scathe, 

In the battle's thick, on the firing line — 
On toward democracy, home and faith to touch 

earth's billions with love divine. 



THE SOCIAL WORKERS 

A MIGHTY God made up of Men is risen in 
the world — 
His might is Wisdom warmed with Love and into 

action hurled — 
His hands and feet are struggling Souls that toil 

in shattered streets — 
His heart is millions merged in one, and through 
the world it beats ! 

The God that dwells from star to star and is the 
path of suns, 

The God the wild-rose sheds like light, the light- 
ning flashes once. 

The God that gropes from drop to drop of all the 
blood of Man, 

That God beholds a newer God sun-rising on his 
Plan! 

Even among the things he shaped — dim-brained 
air-breathing forms — 

Even hid on that planet dashed through his sun- 
threaded storms, 

9 129 



130 The Social Workers 

His frail creations grow like him — they cut from 

dust, and sweep 
A million-throbbing God in God — Deep calleth 

unto Deep! 

O human God we may not meet without a swifter 
pulse, 

Where dwell his feet, where stir his lips, the in- 
sensate Earth exults — 

Cities arise and follow him and nations take on 
wings, 

The squalid peoples dog his flight out of the dust 
of things. 

Dark factories that grind are shocked with earth- 
less song that steals 

From the bowed toiler's broken heart into the 
noise of wheels — 

In the day's smoke, in the night's flame, and where 
the foundries flare. 

Among the belting and the bolts that living God 
IS there! 

He heals the sick, he drains the marsh, he scatters 
joy on pain, 



The Social Workers 131 

He moulds the child into the man, he lives with 
the insane, 

He lights the Earth with flaming hearts, he leads 
with Vision vast 

Misshapen millions to Love's Goal — Earth's love- 
liest dream, and last! 

He fights the fire, he lights the seas, he saves the 

dead in deeds, 
This Christ, this low Messiah-man, this meeter of 

starved needs. 
Daily he cries the race up steeps, through barriers 

and bars. 
And first upon the mountain leaps this challenger 

of stars. 

And we, whose need is near ourselves, whose 

service stays at home, 
We see him struggling up the storm and laboring 

through the foam. 
His pale face at our window shines — swift we 

unlatch the rod, 
The Deeps come In out of the night — our visitor 

Is — God ! 



THE MAY PARTY 

O MILLION-SINGING comes the May 
And whose dumb heart but wakes and 
thrills ? 
Now, as of old, the break-of-day 

Sings through the heart as through the hills — 
New spirit and new day are born — 

Yea, in our souls great suns arise 
With flame more glorious than the morn 
Lit with sun-centred skies I 

O we have watched the blossoms slip 

Through hills of sunniest silent green. 
And when at morn the bluebirds drip 

Dew on wet logs, our eyes have seen — 
Yea, marked the unmowed meadow tremble 

Through a million blades of grass new-born — 
Yea, heard the birds of song assemble 

The beauty of the morn! 

But there is one thing I have seen 

That shall be held within the heart. 



The May Party 133 

When all that deepens into green 

Or blooms in bright blue shall depart — 
It was a hill that blossomed rich 

With buds of an all-lovelier hue 
Than the wild Spring-things that bewitch 

Each year our souls anew! 

Lo, in the Park, and up the lawn, 

And laughing in the leafiness, 
And fresh with all the fragrant dawn, 

And dancing in gay gala dress, 
Our city children loosed to skies, 

A thousand little souls laid bare 
To all the gales of Paradise 

That wandered through their hair. 

O loveliness more absolute 

Than bird or bough or beast or bud, 

pure sweet splendors that transmute 

May's unsoul'd marvellous full flood 
Into a something lit with God ! 

O gazing where they danced and ran 

1 knew then why earth's blossoming sod 

Had given birth to man! 



MANHATTAN, O MY HOME 

MANHATTAN, O my Home, far-flash your 
windowed walls, 
A tide of vast Atlantics comes crying to your calls, 
A tide of glorious peoples on the sea-tide rolls, 
O you are the Home of four-thousand-thousand 
Souls ! 

Of Souls, great Souls, until whose life entirely 

Is lost in Death, is lost to Earth shall never 
greatly roam 
From your Streets where there beats every heart 
with heart that meets 
Manhattan, Manhattan, O my Home! 

Manhattan, O my Home, hands like the hands of 

mine 
Set your trillion stones cemented in a City-shape 

divine. 
And my toil is building greater your Face I 

tremble of. 
You are mine, O you Child of four million mortals' 

love ! 

134 



Manhattan, My Home 135 

Four millions, four millions, who shaped your 
body beautiful, 
To stand on Earth and sun the seas, a light 
across the foam — 
Your least clerk cannot shirk your new Gospel- 
mandate : Work ! 
Manhattan, Manhattan, O my Home! 

Manhattan, O my Home, you are Workshop of 

the World, 
O none must gaze upon you save him whose 

strength is hurled 
In your giant Workshop labor, ever-rolling toward 

our Goal: 
As God, to sweat new Worlds out, as God, to build 

the Soul ! 

The Soul, the Soul, which Is won by Man through 
laboring 
As God built Worlds, as God wrought Man, 
and shaped the starry dome : 
In life's coil and turmoil we get God alone through 
toll! 
Manhattan, Manhattan, O my Home! 



136 Manhattan, O My Home 

Manhattan, O my Home, your wild grandeur Is 

the booty 
Spoiled of hills, yet how other than the hills your 

wondrous beauty — 
Here Is Man, not the prairies, here are lamps, 

scarce a star — 
But than Nature, Human Nature is more beautiful 

by far! 

O Nature, Man's Nature ! your streets with Souls 
are undulant. 
The two-starred face, the supple limbs, the 
forms that go and come — 
Here we steep our hearts deep In the floods of 
Soul that sweep — 
Manhattan, Manhattan, O my Home! 

Manhattan, O my Home, face Fate with courage 

high, 
Go down in no death-melly. In no world-wreckage 

die. 
Lead the Earth by the love, by the service that you 

render — 
O tenoned be in God, O my City, all your splendor ! 



Manhattan, O My Home 137 

In God, our God ! that deathless in your Destiny 
' Your Spirit through Earth's billions like a 
battle-cry may comb — 
Labor hard toward the starred rolling glory of 
the Lord ! — 
Manhattan, Manhattan, O my Home! 



CONEY ISLAND 

LIKE a night of human stars, 
What a rush of starriest faces, 
Gliding in on the sparkling cars, 

Or the boats through dim sea-places ! 
Oceans of Humanity 

Break in song on headland shoals — 
Gathered like the drops of the sea. 
Here are seas of human souls. 

Night has emptied out a city 

On our Isles of joy and beauty, 
Night has hushed day's trade entreaty. 

And the hunger-cries of duty — 
Here are lips of rushing laughter. 

Here the wild eyes sunned with love- 
All the crowds, before and after, 

To one heart's pulse stir and move! 

Golden is the Atlantic's flow 

That upon the Island beats, 

Gold the great Isle's towering glow. 

Golden are her streaming streets — 
138 



Coney Island 139 

Golden Is the laughing summer 

Shot with stars and singing sea — 

You, too, laugh, O travel-worn drummer. 
Shop girl, clerk ! Come, human be ! 

Come, be boys and girls together. 

Dip in nonsense the seared heart — 
Frisk in silliest fun, and weather 

Gales of sport that blow apart 
Brain-stuff stored In strife and scathe — 

Know that sometimes Falstaff joys 
Are as human as God-faith ! — 

Come, O come, be girls and boys ! 

Gathered like the drops of the sea. 

Come, you tired man, you woman — 
Safety-valves of jollity 

Shall but make you deepller human! 
Come, and let the gods attend you. 

All the gods of love and mirth — 
They shall save you, they shall send you 

Home with strength to master Earth ! 



THE SUN-HYMN OF THE CITY 

WHO marshals the herds of the Deep? 
He marshals the herds of the human I 
Who wakes the great rollers from sleep? 
He wakens the man and the woman ! 
Who drives the great shore-tide that rolls 

On the rocks In the dawn's thick murk? 
He drives the vast millions of Souls 
To the long day's work ! 

Of old, when the World was wild, 

W^hen tribes on Hills of the Morn 
Were young with the faith of a child, 

The chanter went forth through the corn, 
Stole forth, with the tribe at his heels. 

By waters where red deer run, 
And floating In birchen keels 

Sang a hymn to the Sun ! 

Even so, when the Sun Is arisen 

Golden on acres of stone 
That glitter In the sky like a Vision 

Of a dreamer that dreams alone, 
140 



The Sun-Hymn of the City 141 

Out of the bell of the steeple, 

Out of the chimney's rim, 
Out of the hearts of a people 

Soars a Sun-Hymn! 

Hymn not of chanters and slayers. 

Hymn of machines as they beat — 
Hymn not of indolent prayers. 

Hymn of the man-tossing street — 
Hymn of the Laborers moulding 

A World to their perilous Dream, 
Hymn of the millions unfolding 

Their rays of the Gleam ! 

Who marshals the herds of the human ? 

He marshals the herds of the Deep ! 
Unto him every man, every woman. 

Rolls, wakened like waves from their sleep, 
Sea-music, far-tidal, victorious 

Over odds that like rocks are, like shoals, 
A Hymn that is godlike and glorious, 

A Sun-Hymn of Souls! 



MORNING 

PLACID and pure the glory of morning suf- 
fuses me — 
A glory new as the first laugh of a child — 
Earth underfoot is hushed yet wild 
With song breaking through, with chantings of 

love, 
Woodfolk, and singing skyfolk, and duck and 

dove. 
And it seems that the whole world uses me 
As a wild pipe to blow the glory of morning 

through ! 
Far in the up-vanishing spaces of the blue 
And rolling higher 
Fire — sun-fire 
Burns through the treetops sparkling million-eyed 

dew — 
Leaves glisten, streams gleam. 
Between rocks brooks shout with the splendor 

world-bathing. 
And winding gales swathing 
The song-sparrow, press a wild chant from his 

throat ! 

142 



Morning 143 

Living things float 

In a realness pure as a dream. 

I enter among the hills, 

By a pool I stand, 

Wet treetrunks gather about me in the tingling 

weather. 
And treetops sing together, 
And a wild bird spills 
A flaming melody over the woody land ! 
And suddenly human folk are seen under trees. 
All standing in the glory strong, that stills 
The street-storm in the heart. 
I see the laborer stand beside his cart. 
His shovel under dead leaves; and at ease 
On a low bench a dreaming couple brood : 
A teacher muses in the wood: 
A bowed old man leans on his cane : 
A sick clerk stares with glory-haunted pain : 
And somehow in silent waves of the wind and the 

sun. 
Knit by the live Earth underfoot. 
Each living one 
Is bound with me into a brotherhood mute. 



144 Morning 

We speak nor glance at one another, 

But squirrel and bird and tree and Earth and soul 

Are one : 

Yonder sun 

Is my brother: 

Yonder robins that run, 

Yonder couple that pause In their stroll, 

Yonder laborer there at his cart. 

Each one 

Is my brother 

And walks with glory In my heart. 



IN THE FOREST 

COVER me over, forest wild, 
Wind me about with windy boughs, 
Make me, O Mother, your broken child 

Who strayed from the beautiful house — 

Who strayed from the path with pine-needles 
brown. 

From pool and clearing, wild-rose and brier, 
And in the stone-kiln of the Terrible Town 

Was burnt in the Human Fire ! 

Take me ! my torn heart fitfully beats 

Even at your touch, with its ancient pity — 

Hush in the Brain the crowded streets, 
The million eyes of the city! 

But dream not now, O Mother of me, 

Your child will bide in your strange wild 
beauty — 

No, he has tasted Eternity, 

Whose awful tide is Duty! 

lO 145 



146 In the Forest 

He knows the Sorrow of Man; he Knows 

His Is the World where the Man-tides drift- — 
But, oh, to-night, with wind and wild rose, 

Mother, he Is uplift! 
But oh, to-night, with the brown wild duck, 

Bluebird and chipmunk, dusk dimmed, night 
starred. 
Let his shattered hands your glories pluck, 

Mother, till he sees God! 



THE EAST RIVER BRIDGE MARKET 

THE riveted rafters drip the rain and the twi- 
light pave is puddle and mud, 
But the peddler's carts are huddled again and the 

crowd jams past in a woolen flood— 
They weave a pattern of reds and blacks, women 

in shawls and men in coats. 
Women who trudge with broken backs and wisps 
of men with bearded throats. 

From jets cart-held the wind-tossed gas flames a 

shadowy fire that traces 
Poverty's stamp on the forms that pass, misery s 

blight on the world-old faces — 
Pain, that sculptor of men, has creased many a 

hne in many a brow. 
Till he, with love divine, released a splendor which 

is shining now. 

For under the grays and the saffrons daubed on 
the ancient faces, life looks through, 

Every atom of soul absorbed in the human stir and 
the struggle new — 

H7 



148 The East River Bridge Market 

These as by red-hot rivets are clutched to the nerve- 
hve business thrilling the hour — 

Here where the strings of the purse are touched 
the brain becomes a working power. 

Where have I mixed in this scene before? In 

what strange world, in what strange age? 
Lo, in the flesh of life's uproar these people float 

from a printed page, 
Rises Isaiah, Rizpah, Ruth, prophet, and woman- 

in-love, and mother, 
See where Isaiah is visioning Truth as he peddles 

fish to Abel's brother. 

Worlds away and worlds behind all living worlds 
these souls assemble, 

Rizpah there with her dead to mind, Ruth with her 
yearning heart a-tremble ! 

What to these are Wall Street's currents of elec- 
tricity circling Earth? 

What to these are Broadway's torrents of roaring 
work and rippling mirth? 

By what nerve do these souls connect with the huge 
skyscraping towers of steel 



The East River Bridge Market 149 

That girdle Earth with their intellect, a might that 

world-end millions feel? 
What place have these in the world we sense and 

glimpse in the morning paper's print? 
Lost, they are lost in a world immense, and who 

is aware of their strife and stint? 

And yet America's mightiest age shall be child of 
these wonderful mothers of men — 

Each in her realm is queen and sage, and shall re- 
make the world again — 

Her babes are the masters of dim To-morrows, 
her daughters the wives and teachers to 
come. 

Out of her woes and her infinite sorrows she breeds 
the Lincolns of the slum. 

Out of the simple and common clay, out of the 

very earth of Earth, 
Now, as ever, there break away spirits that feed 

the world's great dearth — 
Take the startling gas-fire glow, stand, stand still, 

let me see your face ! 
Mother, that your strange heart might know you 

are the fount of a future race! 



THE TROLLEY LOVERS 

MOON of the wild Italian girl! five hundred 
years have fled 
And still you shine, O Juliet's moon, and Juliet is 

dead. 
Swinging around the rolling Earth, you and the 

Earth are hurled, 
One with ever-born lovers young, one with the 
dusk of the World — 

Love, O frail young sweet first love, that clothes 

the world with magic. 
Whose tiniest smile is Rosalind-glad, whose frown 

is Hamlet-tragic, 
That lifts our Souls until we step from star to star 

down skies, 
That makes one glance. Eternity, one hand's touch. 

Paradise — 

Love has not fled, love is not dead ! O Juliet gone 

to dust, 
O sweet girl-soul whose flight from world to world 

beyond our lust 

150 



The Trolley Lovers 151 

Is (so we dream) with Romeo, the very pangs you 

knew 
Pulse on the rolling Earth this hour, and young 

hearts are pierced through. 

Lo, from the sea's moon-road and lips foaming 

with song, we ride 
Through the moon half-light of the flowing fields 

— down shining tracks we glide 
In the glow of the golden clanging trolley: sweet 

breezes fan our cheeks: 
We seem to hurtle among the stars: all's sacred: 

no one speaks. 

The lights flash past, the window-lights, the damp 

scents of the field. 
We race the rolling Earth beneath till new skies 

are revealed — 
And I on the last seat looking ahead, pulse with 

the pulsing cars 
To see the lovers, the sad young lovers whose souls 

are in the stars. 

No Capulet-gardens may they have as screen from 
prying eyes — 



152 The Trolley Lovers 

Only the Earth, only the stars, only the car that 

flies — 
They lose themselves in each other's love — head 

lowered close to head — 
O candid love among the poor ! Not Juliet's far 

love fled 

Down the rolling years, more tender is, more true, 

more young, more pure — 
Here are the earthly marriages made that through 

all life endure — 
Here is a sight to purge my soul, to put my heart 

in tune — 
O love, young live American girls, under dead 

Juliet's moon! 



PREPARE YE THE WAY! 

THE voice of the Lord Is on the Deeps — the 
hidden human Deeps are moving, 
Through the world a wildfire sweeps — it is man's 

terrible strength of loving; 
He loosens the molten streams of the heart; he 

pours the hoarded love of the ages — 
Vaults of steel are blown apart— shriveled in flame 
are saints and sages. 

Swift on the Earth is the face of Heaven and every 

soul is sister and brother— 
A new commandment has been given: that men of 

Earth love one another — 
Through rings of fire and dark disasters with 

might of soul we overwhelm clod — 
Yea, we have ceased to serve two Masters — we 

have dropped Mammon, and we love God. 

From tent and tenement and pavilion the people 

pour for the new ablution — 
Race by race, and million by million are caught in 

the swing of a revolution — 

153 



154 Prepare Ye the Way! 

Creeds are crushed and rituals killed, but over the 

Earth a flood is poured, 
Every spirit is stirred and stilled by the living fire 

of a living Lord ! 

Lift up your eyes and look on the fields for they 

are white already with harvest — 
One there cometh to stack the yields and feed thee, 

thou in the street that starvest — 
One there cometh whose gift is this: that by his 

touch is the Light restored: 
The hour is coming — and now is — when the dead 

shall hear the voice of the Lord! 

He, where the smoke of factories rolls, he, where 

the mud of the street is trod. 
Shall call his brothers immortal souls, shall call his 

fellows the Sons of God — 
He shall say we shall pluck out rather the erring 

eye than cast away soul — 
He shall say that Son and Father are one: that 

Man in the Lord is whole. 

He shall shed the love of the sun on the rejected 
and the abhorred — 



Prepare Ye the Way! 155 

He shall gather together in one the children of 
God that are scattered abroad — 

He shall bring to the people youth, the joy and 
glory of well-spent breath 

He shall be the way and the truth, the light and 
the life and the path to Death! 

He shall come eating and drinking among us, a 

common man in village and town — 
We may perceive a Luther that stung us, a pitying 

Christ or a plain John Brown — 
But in our sins and our wild bread-strife, but In 

the streets where we sweat and plod. 
He shall give us the bread of life, he shall work 

us the works of God! 

We shall make stable our sea's wild foam that the 

ends of Earth may evenly move — 
We shall make Earth a Workshop and Home 

where men must toil and where men may 

love — 
And we with a hallowedness transitory shall build 

a World that is new and good — 
We shall go out to utter glory — God and flashes 

of Brotherhood! 



THE NIGHT OF SOULS 

A SOUL Is born into the world, 
A soul is born into the world, 
From out of heaven, from out of heaven, 
A soul, a soul is, crying, hurled — 

A soul into a world of pain, 

A soul is born, — O heavenly rain 

Of stars, of wintry stars, a soul 
Blots your wild glories once again. 

Sing with the morning, sing with the stars, 
A woman worketh with God, and bars 

Of music shudder in human hearts, — 
A woman maketh what living mars. 

O stars of winter, skies of the night, 
A soul is born, flame-pure and white, 

God walketh in these human parts, 
Vast revolutions reach to light. 

Over the face of the waters shine 
Lights of the wild stars, over the brine 

156 



The Night of Souls 157 

Music is tumbling, — God is God, 
And the basest man is an angel divine. 

A rhythm runneth through all things, 
A rhythm runneth, a great song sings 

Up through our hearts, a rhythm soars, 
And we feel the brush of angel wings. 

The wintry streets are by angels trod, 

A rhythm runneth through stone and clod, 

Born is the babe, born is the babe, 
Born is the human babe from God. 

Sing, heart, a psalm to sterile skies. 
Roll out God's glory till it dies 

In music shuddering through wild stars, — 
God's works be praised to Paradise. 

Glory and hearts to God, sing we, 
Hearts and glory to God, O He 

Who rolled the stars and planted the heavens, 
And gives and takes Eternity. 



OCEAN 

SUN on the ocean, winds of the forenoon, 
Tumbhng of sun-tides, music gigantic, — 
Soft the Earth's epic was sung to the shore-dune 
By the great Singer, the gray Atlantic — 

Legends of Brittany, lore of dead bridals. 

Songs of old oceans by wanderers channeled — 

Norsewomen stolen in strange sea-idylls, 

Loves long lost and battles unannaled — 

Psalm of souls who have sealed the indenture 

To push horizons through worlds unwon — 

Sunrise chanteys of sea-adventure 
In silences of sea and sun — 

Saga of ages that washed Earth's granite 

With millions of creatures born of the sea — 

Hymn of the Powers that shaped this planet 
And from year-millions created me. 

So the epic in sun-tides pouring — 

But sang the sea this? I listened and heard 
is8 



Ocean 159 

Shoreward rolling and shoreward roaring 
Tons of water in sunlight stirred — 

I was the thinker, and I the singer, 

I fitted my words to the music of ocean, 

I to the sea was a soul and the bringer 

Of dream that gave meaning to ages of 
motion. 

Up my man-nerves came a-pulse the serrate 
Surface of seas with music and gleam — 

Ocean all morn was my flesh, I his spirit, — 

Touched with my brain he arose into dream. 



THE FIGHT OF PEACE 

HER face Is Lincoln's white with pain and 
burdened with the world — 
Like Lincoln's? No. O world-forlorn, forlorn 

lost spirit furled 
Like an unborn child within the skull! — No Hell 

that Dante dreamed 
Holds this dumb face of ruined hopes, with world- 
woe seared and seamed. 

Not that no sweets have thrilled her lips, no kiss 

of joy her soul, 
Not that her flesh is fanged with Pain, not that 

the smoke of coal 
Cloaks her eternal toil with night through which 

no faith can see — 
But that the flesh born of her flesh must taste her 

agony ! 

She sees her fruit withered in the bud, she sees 

those souls that dawned 
Like five suns in her sunless skies, that, even while 

she mourned, 

1 60 



The Fight of Peace i6i 

Answered the Silence of her life, with smile, with 

love, with word — 
Half-fed, half-clothed, half-lit with brain— and 

Man and God unstirred! 

Unstirred! And I — am I unstirred? O Justice, 

Mercy, Love! 
O Faith ! O words our glad lips shed! O Peace, 

like an Innocent Dove 
Brooding afar on an Innocent World! — Cease! 

shut the lips, and see 
The vast lost millions of mankind, millions In 

misery ! 

Am I more human than this Soul? Then why 

should I waste joy 
In loud excess of wealth and power. In pleasures 

sweet that cloy, 
In Hfe's gilt Superfluities, while this poor woman 

bleeds 
In a wild mad hunt for mere existence, this beast 

with godlike needs? 

O, before God, I nail my heart to the agony of 
the poor, 

IX 



l62 The Fight of Peace 

I shun excess, I seek the Real; so long as these 
endure 

In Hell, I suffer with the millions, not waste joy 
with the few — 

Planting a grain of Love in Earth, that World- 
Love come anew. 

Henceforth I seek Realities: henceforth I live at 

Home, 
With wife and child in quiet joy; far-nooked from 

lips afoam 
With lust: henceforth I live by Faith, get God into 

my days, 
Henceforth plain fare and thoughts divine, and 

simple, honest ways ! 

And lo ! now I enlist, with oath, in the great Fight 

of Peace ! 
O Vision of Earth, where all two billions, sharing 

the Earth's increase, 
Labor, and live out simple lives, in God, with 

spirits pure — 
In silent four-walled battles for God ! O Republic 

of the Poor! 



LEAVING NEW YORK 

AS out of the pier with waving of white and 
roar of whistle the steamer drew, 
That skyhne rose in the evening height with a 

splendor piercing the spirit through — 
West was the sun and east those towers, those 

towers glorious and serene — 
The mightiest hint of human powers that ever the 
groping world has seen. 

Round the lower city we steamed and up and 

under the bridges rolled — 
Over the city's shoulder streamed the sunset in a 

glory of gold — 
The nran-black ferry, the smoke-plumes curled 

over the chimneys, the tugs a-steal, 
All were rich in a human world vast and busy and 

marvelous real. 

Backs of tenements flaunted a trimming of wash- 
lines, babies and homes bared blunt. 

Naked boys were diving and swimming along the 
blackened waterfront, 
163 



164 Leaving New York 

Mighty factories stood in a splendor of chimneying 

smoke and golden river, 
Streets went by and in twilight tender the air with 

humans was all a-quiver. 

And seeing life rich and a millionfold the great 

tears started, the deep heart beat 
With love of people and longings old, for earth 

was divine and life was sweet — 
And when was I more alive than then, so really 

living, a pulsing part 
Of the life of stars and earth and men, folded in 

nature's world-warm heart? 



EARLY APRIL 

TO a bird's high-piped preamble, 
Hark! a glory through the Park, 
Through the saplings and the bramble 
Sparkling over the dripping bark, 
Sunlight fell, golden-hued, 

Fall'n without a warning, 
Kissing the caverns of the wood 
On an April morning. 

Robin, Robin Redbreast 

Danced upon the turf, 
In the lake the ripple's crest 

Mimic'd Ocean's surf. 
And the branches splattered the dew 

Over the lush, wet ground — 
Dawn only lacked of you 

To have its glory crowned. 

In the ample stretch of heaven 

There was not a fleck, a streamer, 

All the perfect air was given, 

Delicious food, to me, the dreamer; 
165 



J 66 Early April 

Loaf, laze and idle 

The delicate dawn away, 

With thoughts of the bridal 
On a rare June day. 

I sat all alone, 

Squirrels tufted their tails, 
And silver fancies, shower-strown, 

I beat, as with a flail, 
Shaping them now to the fluty 

Lyric of a bird. 
Now to the rose-bud beauty 

Of a golden word. 

Oh, what is a pleasure 

If It is not shared? 
What the sweetest leisure 

When a heart's unpaired? 
It is as If a ring 

Lacked Its perfect stone — 
• On that dancing morning of Spring 

I sat there alone. 



THE REASON 

OHi\RK, the pulses of the night, 
The crickets hidden in the field, 
That beat out music of delight 

Till summoned dawn stands half-revealed! 

O mark, above the bearded corn 

And the green wheat and bending rye, 

Tuned to the earth, and calling morn, 
The stars vibrating in the sky! 

And know, divided soul of me. 

Here in the hay-field, sweet in speech. 

This perfect night could never be 
Were we not mated, each to each. 



167 



REVELATION 

O EARTH, I feel you move to-night 
With throbbing music, dark to day, 
With throbbing veins and pulsing might. 
Impelled by universal sway. 

I feel your bare veins breast the flood 

Of Springtide with its kiss divine. 
Exquisite love leaps through your blood, 
Exquisite happiness is mine. 

happiness that makes me feel 

With some new sense, beneath, above. 
The universal system reel 

Through music — O the gift of love! 

1 am aware of all the world, 

Huge vastness failing in the mind, 
A trillion singing sums forth hurled — 
A trifling atom, frail mankind. 

But, earth, what matter if you are 

With trillion singing suns hurled forth- 

i68 



Revelation 169 

O you are still that happy star 

From whose sweet bosom she drew birth. 



O mighty earth, now I am one 

With all your music as you move, 

Rolling your millions round the sun — 
I have accomplished life, I love! 



A BIT OF SPRING MUSIC 

AH, with enchantments dreamy 
Apollo and Aladdin 
Trip in with billows creamy 
To madden and to sadden — 
Ah, with a witchery olden 
The Arab and the Greek 
Along the morning golden 
Sing in the inlet creek — 
And my heart that all night was a fever 
Is stirred, is stirred 
And It sings with the quick bluebird 
His song of "Forever" — 
For he in a bough of a birch at the river 
These words has tossed: 

"Forever and forever and forever and forever 
Something Is lost!" 

Aladdin is Spring that bulldeth the Vision o'er- 

nlght, 
And we wake In a World that Is magic and woven 

of light, 
And the pane of the window that's lost Is our 

heartache's might! 



A Bit of spring Music 171 

Apollo is Dawn so buoyant above and bearing us 

on 
Into the realms of the lonely Sun and the Ocean 



wan, 



Into the saddest of music — O whisper that haunt- 
eth the Dawn! 

And ever at morning, ever in Spring, 

Ever here at the edge of the sea where the song- 
swallows sing, 

Ever here on the coast where the gulls toward the 
sun are a-wing. 

Up the soft billows creamy 

O to madden and to sadden, 

Trip with enchantments dreamy 

Apollo and Aladdin — 

Trip with enchantments dreamy till the blue-bird 
o'er the river — 

Till the bluebird lost in branches his world-sad 
song has tossed: 

"Forever and forever and forever and forever 

Something is lost !" 

O what is Spring that it hearkens back 
Through crowded worlds, through ages gone, 



172 A Bit of Spring Music 

To an ancient sun that on his track 

Dropped a planet, a lesser sun, 

That grew to a Garden, a wild new world. 

Where in the morning, and in the Spring, 

Like two babe-blossoms, and wind-unfurled. 

Woke Adam and Eve, and on the wing 

Of Morn were borne, sweet blossoming? 

Where quick on the star of the fresh-washed Earth 

God saw the miracle ages dreamed, 

A man and a woman that searched for each other 

Till two souls groped to a single birth 

And in the world Love sunlike streamed. 

And hearts were lost in one another! 

O came they to the Ocean 

When the sun was on the sea 

And the waves were silver motion. 

And in blue Eternity 

Pulses of the wings of swallows 

Flaked a fire on the soul — 

And as far as eye could see 

The Deeps slid in the shallows 

With a musical loud roll? 

And were their hearts a blank 

On the diamond Ocean-bank 



A Bit of Spring Music 173 

When the bluebird, O the bluebird, in the bough 

that shades the river. 
These words, of all words, tossed: 
"Forever and forever and forever and forever 
Something is lost?" 



I awake in the morning of Spring, 

I arise and go out. 

My heart bears me forth like the pulse of a wing 

Where the wild seas shout — 

I come to the brink of worlds — to the rocks I 
come — 

When lo ! the vast Deep ! 

And I and the rocks and the sands are a crumb 

Dropped in the sea's world-sweep ! 

And breathless with wonder, my ears with wave- 
thunder 

Filled, my heart thrilled. 

Ah, with enchantments magic 

To madden and to sadden 

Come Apollo and Aladdin 

Ah, with a breath that blows the breast all hollow 

Come Aladdin and Apollo, 



174 A Bit of Spring Music 

And the bluebird, O the bluebird, in the curve of 

the dark river, 
Sings till my heart with these magic words is 

tossed : 
"Forever and forever and forever and forever 
Something is lost!" 



YOU MEAN SO MUCH TO ME 

YOU mean so much to me, so much — 
How futile are these words of mine ! — 
O you must know that your least touch 
Blends with my days a strain divine. 

O you must know that now my life 
Is living yours : I cannot think 

Of breathing without you as wife — 

'Twixt death and men this is my link, 

'Twixt death and men you stand, my star, 

My full-fledged thought, my strong ideal, 

Know you what strength to me you are 
And that my passion Is so real? 

So real, so real! I see your face. 
The rapt Madonna, and I feel 

The passion of the human race. 

Like sudden music, through me steal. 



175 



MAY 

O GARLANDED with flowers Is May, 
O washed In rain the radiant day 
Lifts up her utter loveliness, 
And smites the earth with splendid ray. 

The grasses are blading through the sod, 
The blossoms are bursting through the pod; 

Earth Is a new-born babe again. 
Laughing In the vast arms of God. 



176 



HOME IN THE STORM 

HEART, find In my heart, home — 
The wild rain is on the roof. 
Heart, heart, my heartling, come. 
For the bright stars stand aloof, 

And the night is smashed and torn 

And the wind howls down the wall. 

And black blasts trample the corn. 

Earth rocks, winds roar, skies fall. 

But oh, the golden room. 

And oh, the glorious head, 

And oh, the cheek's half-bloom, 
And two spirits, kin and wed. 

O come to my large warm grasp, 
Heart, my heartling, come, 

O come to my heart, to my clasp. 
Heart, find in my heart, home. 

Home of the golden glow. 
The golden hour secure, 

12 177 



178 Home in the Storm 

Heart, my heartling, know 

Warm love, serene and pure. 



The storm Is even a tie 

Binding us in our home. 

We are our world, you and I, 
Heart, my heartling, come. 



ECSTATIC MAY 

RUSHES of song over the hills, 
Bursts of wild birds from the green brush — 
Mightily the morning stills 
The heart's red rush ! 

Sweeps of wind, winey, intense, 

Shouts where the rock-rolled rillet sings — 
Splendidly and sky-immense 

My soul spreads wings! 

Strike me, O Spring's reorient stroke ! 

Drench me, you wild, delirious floods! 
Oriole song, orchards that smoke 

Storms of white buds ! 

Spring is Earth's time. Spring is Truth's time, 

New worlds, new souls, fresh from God pour. 

Spring is lover's time, joy's time, youth's time, 
Forevermore ! 



179 



MOTHER AND FATHER 

IT was a night of wind and rain that swept 
The windows, and the shining streets lay bare, 
And the storm's hair over the glaring lamps 
Lashed in light silver — but within that house, 
Within that shattered house, one room was dim 
With turned-low gas-flame, and two silent souls 
Crouched on a coflin — and the dead was their 
child ! 

Bare was the lonely room, and the floor creaked. 
And the pane rattled, and the flamelet flickered, — 
A numb gray chill lay on the silent air. 
But that white-blossomed baby born of woman 
Slept like a dreaming flower In summer dusk 
So steeped in sun the petals could not tremble. 
O bud of face, smiling at tender lips! 
O half-shut eyes, and little hands like foam 
Blown from a breaker by a skimming breeze ! 
That black-haired Mother from her creaking chair 
Leaned, and touched lips to the sweet icy lips. 
Leaned, and with fingers strove to enclasp the 
foam, 

i8o 



Mother and Father i8l 

Leaned, and with glazed eyes drank to her soul her 

dead! 
But the rough father fingered his own rough hair 
And eyed the cheerless floor heart-hesitant. 
That towering tenement wherein the room 
Was but a cell, shook down through airshaft tube 
Gusts of wild mirth, and men and women danced 
Like careless Furies over the face of the dead. 
Child of the poor ! oh, first-born of their flesh ! 
Wind and wild mirth and the night's rain rolled 

round it, 
And the far stars that fill the heavens with fire. 

Then swift, with hair flung tossing back, and 

hands 
Toward the far dancers and the farther stars. 
The woman, a bent bough loosed, leaped up and 

cried 
Harshly above the storm and the dim laughter: 

*'0 God my God, Thou hast forsaken us ! 
Dead is my child ! Were we not poor enough ? 
O dead! Now all is gone!" 

And the rough husband 
Made moan: '*We have each other — " 



1 82 Mother and Father 

But her voice 
Wild with lamenting, shrilled: "Each other! 

God I 
No lies! We have lied too long! Too long! 

Too long! 
You have a day-end wife whose brain is blind 
With toil and trouble, and I a day-end husband 
Wrung by his labor dry — dry ! Have each other !" 

And she hurried to him, and she seized his hands 
In icy clasp, and she muttered as if crazed: 

^'We have thrown our lives to our masters ! Why 

should we live? 
We have sold our brains packed with the glories 

of Earth 
For leave to live ! O you and I, John, you. 
Who have studied so long, and have taught, and 

shaped little children 
Toward excellent Manhood, and I who have 

labored and wrought 
To live — as you wish — our heart's ideals — you 

and I, 
What has life paid in return? What has life paid? 
All's emptied out! We have lost our fight!" 



Mother and Father 183 

She stooped, 
And her shrill small whisper cut through his heart 

like a knife: 
"Kill me — then kill yourself: let us seek Peace! 
Peace! oh, this Peace our wild hearts hunger for!" 

And he rose, and his heart beat wild: 

"Oh, Helen, Helen, 
Strive to be calm ! Be sane!" 

"Be sane!" she laughed, 
"Sane In the wildest hour of a crazy life! 
But what know you? Oh, the long months and 

months 
I made a sweetness in our bitterness 
By stitching, stitching darling baby clothes — 
And every stitch created the wild joy 
A little nearer to Its birth. I dreamed 
Of wild little hands against my breathless mouth. 
Of wee sweet lips draining my breast of milk. 
Of low wails hushed with kisses, and soft laughter 
Shared In the sudden glory of early morning! — 
My darling, oh, my darling little boy 



184 Mother and Father 

Clutched in my arms, his heart on my heart, his 

arms 
At my neck — my darling whose wee filmiest touch 
Warmed me all over — oh three walls have fallen 

down 
From our heart's house — dream you to-night we'll 

sleep? 
And then you prattle on of sanity! 
Kill me— or— " 

"Hush !" he cried, and his cheeks went white, 
"All will be well— my Helen—" 

"Your Helen?" Again 
Harshly her laughter broke, "Am I yours? Then 

kill! 
I'll nevermore be slave to anyone ! 
Talk! talk! and ever talk! I am a Mother, 
Christ was less — nailed to His Crucifix 
What dreamt he in the pangs of his wild passing 
Of pain such as the woman in the street 
Knows on the night of birth? I stood with God, 
I was clutched at the throat, and seized by the hair, 

and swung 



Mother and Father 185 

Choking between wild drifts of suns — I rose, 
Seized Vega, and smashed down upon my head 
That ocean of sun-fire and went up through flame ! 
It was the Creation-moment of the World ! 
Wild through the streets went singing angels, 

hosts 
Swept on the winds, and the wild Universe reeled 
With the strain and sweat of birthing a human 

soul! 
Think you that God's pain equals that, when He 
Creates a planet? For the planet is dead, 
And the soul lives ! Lo, in the early morning, 
When like a dazzled girl opening her heart 
To love, to the enchanting glory of love, 
Gray stealing dawn glimmered half-timid in the 

room, 
I, with the Peace that passeth understanding. 
Cradled in arms my incarnated dream. 
My little Christ fast-sleeping in my arms — " 

And her bitter cry went forth, and she tore her 

hair. 
And her body shuddered — 

"Day, and day and night 



i86 Mother and Father 

Moaning with pain, to his God — to his God, to 

me, 
His heart cried, and his agonized baby eyes 
Begged as a soul in torture ! What right has God 
To lay on a helpless inarticulate child 
A torture that it cannot name ? O my child ! 
How I wildly sang hushing his moans with music, 
How I kissed the sweet lips shut and sealed the 

eyes, 
How I offered years of agony to God, 
Prayed that the child's pain but be given me 
To bear for the child! Did God hear? Yes, he 

heard — 
O well enough he heard!" she shrilly laughed, 
''Through ghastly nights my darling baby moaned. 
And moaned until I clutched his tiny hand. 
And smiled, and slept, and then he slept and 

slept — 
O God my God, Thou hast forsaken us!" 

He moaned: "Helen, Helen, listen — " 

"Listen!" She leaped 
From his arms, she drew a vial from out her 
breast, 



Mother and Father 187 

She, held It high, and with a laugh, cried : 

' "Here— 
I, too, shall go — I drink this to the boy I" 

Glitteringly poised It swayed, and the ringed skies 
Waited for a soul to pass, but with a cry 
As of the life, he snaked to her side, and snatched 
The glass in his hand, crying 

"For God's sake, Helen! 
O for God's sake!" 

And she clutched his arms 
And beat, and cried, both hands quivering upon 
him: 

"Give me the drink! Give me the drink, I say! 
I'll have the drink!" 

And to and fro they fought 
Under the flickering flame and beside the dead, 
The vial held on high, and the floor creaked, 
And the pane rattled, and the dim mirth gusted. 



1 88 Mother and Father 

But at the last, with one wild downward swoop 
He felled the glass, and crushed it with his heel: 

"Oh, Helen!" he moaned, "that you and I — that 
you—" 

And could no further, for his heart so shook, 
His hand so trembled and his head so throbbed ! 
With one last struggle he brought her down on 

the couch 
And tightly grasped her hands and held her there ! 

But crouching in his arms she muttered : "Fool 1 
You fool! Our life henceforth Is hving death!" 

Then he bowed low upon her struggling hands 
And all his heart broke, and hot drops of tears 
Fell scalding on her fingers, and his head 
With all the roughened hair lay in her lap, 
And the great shoulders heaved with unwonted 

sobs, 
Terrible man-sobs cracking his huge frame. 
And In the silence rattled the blown window 
And the wild laughter gusted, and the light 



Mother and Father 189 

Blew, and the dead was as the untrodden daisy 

Smihng to God In the loud battlefield, 

Fresh sun-white petals at peace In man's weird 

carnage. 
And then across the woman's heart a light 
Was laid, and with the blinding light a heat 
Went through her blood — that head upon her lap, 
Those shoulders heaving sobs, that stricken man, 
Seemed even as another babe to her — 
Love smote, and among heart-strings, something 

snapped. 
And she shook with a chill that shriveled her 

breast, and clutched 
At her throat, and she gasped, and cried out, and 

trembled, 
And cried out, and her heart broke, and her eyes 

went blind, 
And she burled sudden her face In the roughened 

hair, 
And wept. 

The two throbbing bodies trembled together 
And the two spirits shook through the quivering 
flesh 



190 Mother and Father 

And were one Pain, one Thought, one passion of 

Love — 
Marriage ! But softly from her huddhng head 
He drew, and straightened, and his storm-face 

shone 
With many lightnings, and he raised her up 
Into his arms, and cried: 

"Helen, my wife! 
My own own darling Helen! Helen, my wife!'' 

"Oh, John" from her heart breathed she, and 
sobbed in his arms. 

"Helen, my Helen, life has broken our hearts, 
But broken only to open the still chambers 
That love, that holiest love, may enter in ! 
Take, heart, this comfort — the sweet prayer for 

the Dead: 
'The Lord giveth : the Lord taketh away : 
Blessed be the Lord's name !' True ! For great 

God loaned us 
A little child, and now In pitying tender 
Releases him from our wild human pain!" 



Mother and Father 191 

"Ah, I had suffered for him—" 

"No, my love! 
The heart's pain is a lonely pain ! But, hark ! 
Not ever would the child be as a child; 
We had had the terrible pangs of mother and 

father 
Marking the boy that drifted from our arms 
Into the sea-bottom tides of the human Deeps ! 
Yea, we had seen this being that we wrought. 
Even as God wrought us, reach up above us 
Perchance to smite us down — to be our shame ! 
These little creatures we call up from God, 
These little things our very hands create, 
Oft turn on the creators — " 

"Talk! talk! talk!" 
She wailed: "He could have killed me when a 

man — 
My boy ! he could have torn me limb from limb ! 
But then my death had had some glory in it ! 
I had died for him ! Oh, words, and yet more 

words !" 

Then, stricken at heart, with one hand stroking 
her. 



192 Mother and Father 

Through his vast cloud of Sorrow he strove to 

think, 
But the poor brain blunt with unusual grief 
Went blind, and lips were sealed, and his dumb 

heart 
Hungered to comfort her; and as he sat 
Silent, she slipped away, and left a space 
Of coldness In his arms — bent on the babe. 
Kissed It, and clutched the tiny hands, and wailed 
Of "darling," "little baby," "broken heart." 
And as he gazed at her he thought that never 
Since the first hour she lifted lips to him — 
Lips to be kissed for frail first love that smote 
A tremor of quivering oat-fields through their 

hearts, 
A music of Earth soaring like a singing thrush 
In the blue heavens, while fire, fire, wild flame 
Went like a sheet along the slant of skies — 
Had he beheld such glory of womanhood. 
He loved her that wild moment with a love 
Grown pure and deep and purged away of self. 
She seemed too beautiful to be his wife. 
Too sacred to be touched by hands like his, 
Too like an angel to be linked with a man. 
Yearning, revering, barely daring forth, 



Mother and Father 193 

Breathless, and like a child, he stole to her, 
Stole softly, and on fire with sacred love, 
Bent, took her chilly fingers in his clasp, 
And kissed them. 

"Helen — all of God I know 
Is in you : all of God and all of woman : 
And all of love, and all of hfe and death: 
I never loved you as I love to-night — 
So pure, so deep." 

And she turned slowly, saw — 
While a pale wonder weakened all her flesh. 
And a wild glory stole into her heart — 
Through blinded eyes, his mute awe-stricken face. 

*'Helen," he murmured, "like a meteorite 
Dropped from a sun that swims the Milky Way, 
And smiting the passing Earth with a dart of 

flame, 
A splinter of Revelation smites me : I — 
I see — see God ! Let this dead child bear witness 
To the Lord's might and glory, His love and 

wisdom, 
«3 



194 Mother and Father 

For the child has worked the miracle of Souls ! 
O miracle, that of the brainy dust 
Makes the eternal spirit — that of the flesh 
Creates the Infinite soul ! For the woman touched 
With child, becomes that miracle, the Mother — 
That being of Soul that the God shaped her 

toward, 
That human highest that her whole heart is aimed 

at, 
That God within God, being God's earth-hands. 
Earth-mind, earth-heart to create from little chil- 
dren 
Souls ! So the dead child has fulfilled you ! 

Better 
A woman be the mother of the dead 
Than be no mother; better to lose in death 
The exquisite wilding child, than have no child: 
Better to know the nine-months' blossoming 
And that night lowered deep in the flames of Hell, 
And bear dead fruit in fire, than live long life 
Only by half — no mother. To be a mother 
Is woman's mission ! Is not her flesh framed for 

it? 
Is not her heart a blood-red hearth that a child 
May warm in the flame until the wild-fire. Love, 



Mother and Father 195 

Loosen the infolded petals and the Soul blossom? 
Is not her soul as the far skies, tremendous, 
That children may be snatched through it on wings 
Up through the starry ether into God? 
Oh, are not her huge still skies and the vast orbit 
Circling through Deeps, which she, like a swim- 
ming planet, 
Takes at the Mother-moment, hers by birth-right? 
Is not her being shaped for this sacrijfice. 
Service, these wild child-glories? Oh, the child 
Fulfils the woman ! She that lives a life 
Of childlessness, is as a little child 
Who, toiling in a factory of hell. 
Blowing soft glass in the white glare of fires, 
Knows old age, and the ague of old joints. 
Wrinkles of wintry years, and withering heart, 
And blighted soul, and never is a child — 
Never a wild fairy haunting the sun-lit daisies. 
Never a flash of feet In the twilight house, 
Never a ripple of laughter where wild cheeks 

laugh. 
Never the joy of meadowland and upland. 
Earth's magic! Such a poor and bleak half- 
woman 
Is but a broken purpose, and a vision 



196 Mother and Father 

Glimpsed at and then withdrawn, and a sweet 

dream 
Waked from before fulfilment! All through life 
She sweeps, a mockery of womanhood!" 

"I thlnk,'^ she breathed, "O John, I think I see!'' 
Her eyes were wide, her breathing fast. 

"My Helen, 
The child has brought you to fiulfilment : made 
Glories where there were none, and you to me 
Are God — and the Eternal — the forever — 
I worship at the fringes of your skirt." 

Faster she breathed, and her eyes lit with light 
As from some far-off world unseen of men — 
Then gazed upon the worship of his eyes. 

*'Oh, true," she murmured, breathless, ''God came 

down 
And at the birth, stood with me, and I saw 
Truth ! And I am fulfiled !— But life, but life—" 

Her voice broke, misery came on her again. 



Mother and Father 197 

"No more! no more!" he cried, "Accept God's 

work ! 
And lo ! I think that even in the death, 
As in the birth, the child fulfils us, Helen ! 
For lo ! its little death has come to us 
With sanctifying touch: it hallows us: 
And in our poor and meager human love 
Comes the vast God : for love is hardly love 
Until dark Sorrow deepens it forever ! 
Oh, our love, Helen, is grown so holy 
I hardly dare, to put my hand in yours. 
I never loved as I love you to-night. 
So purely, deeply, chastely! Helen, wife, 
This dead babe marries us in holier bands 
Of marriage than we dreamed: forever now 
Our heartstrings, torn with sorrow out, must bind 
Each other's heart to each, and every pain 
And every joy will thrill us both together 
As if we were one soul." 

Then in her heart 
Wild hymns were sung, and her eyes rained love, 

and her lips 
Closed with his lips, and softly clasping, kissing, 
They stood, the holiest lovers among men. 



198 Mother and Father 

*'And love!" he murmured, "as the long years 

speed, 
About our knees little wild children shall laugh, 
Upon our floor little wild children shall play, 
And swirling on like twin-stars with wild planets 
Dancing about them, we and our new-born children 
Shall dance through the long years!" 

And to his soul 
She whispered : "You are my husband, you are my 
husband!" 

Soft fell the silence of the dying wind 
And dying mirth, and the bare little room 
Thrilled with a Presence, and so steeped in it 
Were they, they spoke not: but she slipped from 

him. 
And drew him with her hand to the white coffin, 
And stooped, and gave the dead a holy kiss, 
And suddenly murmured with devout full fervor: 

"The Lord giveth : the Lord taketh away" — 

And he took up the words, and both sent rolling 
To God — that cry of Earth that makes Man 
glorious — 

"Blessed be the name of the Lord!" 



EXCERPTS FROM "ADAM 
AND EVE" 



Excerpts from Adam and Eve 201 

I AM- ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF 
LOVE 

1AM rocked in the cradle of Love, I shall never 
escape ! 
I am rocked In the cradle of Love, I am lost, lost, 

lost! 
I am rocked In the cradle of Love, O nevermore 
free am I ! 
But, O God, If I could, If I could be free 
I should cling to the cradle of Love, 
To the world-holding cradle of Love, 
And Implore sweet Love to enthrall me, to 
keep me the babe that I am. 

I am lulled In Eternity's arms, on her breast am I 

laid, 
I am lulled In Eternity's arms, on her heart throb- 
bing, throbbing, 
I am lulled In Eternity's arms, new-born, new- 
born, and a babe! 

And, O God, If I could, If I could break free 

I should cling to Eternity's arms. 

To the world-wide Eternity's arms 

And Implore my Mother to keep me, to keep 

me the babe that I am. 



202 Excerpts from Adam and Eve 

WHAT DO I LOVE 

WTiat do I love? 
I think this little pebble shining wet 
Can speak to me. I think the little grasses 
That drip sweet dew, can utter dear song for me. 
I think the blue-winged bird in the bending bough 
Could love me too, as I, as I love him. 
I think that yonder sun could speak to me, 
And that his heat is the strong heat of love. 
O now I think that everything there is 
Is more than I, yet like me — O is God. 



Excerpts from Adam and Eve 203 

ADAM, WHEN TOLD ABOUT EVE 

OEVEN now I know that I am lonely ! 
Lonely In spite of You, God, and the wild 
morning, the magic woods, 
The music of Earth, the splendors of heaven, the 

air! 
Lonely, longing and insufficient I waste In the air, 

I droop, 
Lonely, longing and yearning, yearning, I fail be- 
neath yonder sun-dazzle, 
Lonely in splendors and gorgeous slopes, 
Lonely in God, lonely in God, 
And I fail, I droop, I die, I wither of longing and 

longing ! 
Give me the woman, give me the beauty of woman. 
Her hair, eyes, lips, cheeks, arms, flushed, flooded 

with God, God, God! 
My woman of beauty within that breaks through 

and Is beauty without — 
My woman of moods and speeches, of walks, O 

comrade mine ! 
She who Is You, God, at last become visible, 

palpable, real. 
So near, and so shaped I can gather you up to my 

heart — 
My armful of God! 



204 Excerpts from Adam and Eve 

ADAM, ON FIRST SEEING EVE 

I CANNOT think but that my life ends here — 
O stung with loveliness, what shall I say, I 
think ? 

stung with the bud-bursting Perfect, what is left, 

what is wished for? 

1 strike the skies in this — I stretch my soul out 

god-length — 
Nothing is left — all has been done. 

All the wild beauty I ever beheld, all joys, all love- 
linesses. 

All songs I have heard, O freshets of song, O swift 
swollen creeks gushing and pouring. 

All dreams that laden with sweet Springtime 
clouded soft-shimmering through me and 
through me ! 

And my God, O God of my Gods, God found 
around and about me, 

(Dear living presence In leaf. In bird. In rock. In 
waters rippling, 

Voice In skies, rapture of Earth, sweet quick rap- 
ture of Springtime) 

Seem all summed up, encased, forever merged 

In this god-shape, this womanly loveliness. 



Excerpts from Adam and Eve 205 

Ah, here lies Spring on the ground, 
Ah, here sleep skies and their stars. 
Ah, here dreams Earth under sun-flame, 
Ah, here rests God from His labors. 



2o6 Excerpts from Adam and Eve 

O HENCEFORTH I SHALL GO 
HENCEFORTH I shall go 



o 



Strewing the Earth with God! 
O henceforth I shall leap 
Down twenty valleys and fly 
With this woman over the hills — 
We shall light the woods with music, 
We shall smite the cliffs with song ! 
O henceforth I shall burst 
From my breasts two mighty wings 
And go soaring over the heavens, 
Cometing through the cool-hushed blue, 
Cometing with a flying heart, 
Singing lips and starry soul! 



Excerpts from Adam and Eve 207 

ADAM'S SONG TO EVE 

01 AM voiced with a voice 
That loveth to sing ! O I am strung with 
a string 
That loveth to shudder out music, music ravishing- 
wild 
For ears such as yours. O I am souled with a 

soul, 
A voice in spaces of light, intensest soft light, 
Light of the faint dawn, light of the early dusk, 

lambent light 
Last seen on the peaks, the peaks when evening 

has come ! 
I could sing to you, Eve, till the last star rushed 

to the sky, 
I could sing to you. Eve, till the last star fell from 

the night, 
I could sing to you, Eve, through morn, through 

noon, through the night 
Till the Earth shot out and snapped again to the 

sun 
And shriveled away, sun-burning, shriveled away. 
No use for the mute black rocks that never are 
tongued, 



2o8 Excerpts from Adam and Eve 

No use for the growling gray wolves that never 

can sing, 
No use for the brawling bold brook that sings 

without soul. 
I am the singer alone in the sum of the skies 
And you the sweet listener, listener, darling of 

me! — 



Excerpts from Adam and Eve 209 

WE MUST LOVE EACH OTHER 
FOREVER 

WE must love each other forever — 
There is nothing else in the wheeling 
Universe, 
There is nothing else in the whirled Eternities, 
In the thundering star-herds stampeding down 

prairies of space. 
In the blizzards that flake and shatter through 

the vast black Black, 
In the furious fires of flaming suns! — 



2IO Excerpts from Adam and Eve 

EVE'S SONG 

LYRIC In sun-stricken lawns, 
Lyric in wayward-wild hollows. 

Lyric in sky-bursts of splendor surrounding, en- 
folding, engulfing my heart ! 

Lyric of God walking soft, O soft in recesses of 
my soul ! 

O lyric welled up from all me to my throat, to my 
throat. 

Welled up, and burst through with a lovely wild 
trill of rillets of music 

Chanting love, throbbing love, scattering love on 
the earth-ways, 

O scattering, scattering love, wild love ! scattering 
love ! 

O drown me in love, 

O take me and lead me 

Through storms of love-passion, 

O take me and burn me 

In fires of heaven, 

take me and crush me 
In the arms of wild love ! 

1 was born to desire, I was born for you, love me ! 
I was born to desire, beloved, O beloved ! 

I was born out of God's vast heart and I took his 

love out with me 
Into the world — into the unloving world! 



Excerpts from Adam and Eve 21 1 

I PANT WITH THE GLORY OF 
THE WOODS 

I PANT with the glory of the woods! 
We have been wild children — wandering 
wild children 

Dancing over the forest floor — pine-needles, pine- 
needles ! 

Fresh wet mosses dewing our feet, 

Sunlight splashing between the boughs, 

Glistering sweet in Adam's eyes! 

Through the dim cavernous coolness we flew, we 
flew, 

Laughing to the songs of the birds, 

Singing to the time of our hearts, 

(O wild hearts! wild throbbing hearts! hearts so 
pure with morning!) 

And O the silence intense with the creaking of 
leaves. 

And O the still skies intense with the calling eagles, 

And O the liquid loveliness that gurgled and noz- 
zled over the wet, wet stones of the fresh- 
shouting brook. 

And O the pure, clean thrill of the first dawn of 
the world, tasted, drunk in from the hush 
of the rock-shaded spring, 

And O the clearing, long-grassed, flashing in the 
streaming sun ! 



212 Excerpts from Adam and Eve 

DAFFODIL-BUDS WAKEN 

GLORY sings along the blood — 
Daffodil-buds waken — dripping dew spar- 
kles — 
And the liquid, liquid trill of ten thousand little 

creatures 
Chorus in one hymn of love! 
O the frog that croaks ! 
O the dove that coos ! 
O the cricket that cries ! 
O the sparrow that chirps ! 
And the mocking bird that shoots the rushing 

cataracts of all song 
Darting splashing sun on sun of fire of melody 

over the world 
Till the woodland's aflame, 
Till the heart catches fire! 
Or the little scarlet tanager 
That grips the topmost bough 
Bathed in bright sun and lost against the blue 
And softly swaying in the delicious breeze 
Trilling blood-red from his throat! 
O woodland calls to woodland, pine to pine, and 

oak to oak 



Excerpts from Adam and Eve 213 

Shaking song from each to each, 

(O wild scattering, O dispersion! O wild weav- 
ing of voice-splendor!) 

And hark, where the smooth idle stream spills off 
down ten stones 

With little strands of splashes glittering in the sun 

And a soft melody of the liquidest tone. 

Down all the grasses, dew glistens. 

Over the sheet of waters the pink-footed, purple- 
breast dove beats close, and the stream 

Mirrors his white underwings, as they flap, as they 
wave! 



214 Excerpts from Adam and Eve 

THE DEATH-BIRTH DAYS 

AFTER plenteous harvest days — 
Golden grain wind-rippled up sunny hills, 
Crimson apples dropping in grassy orchards, 
Russet-turned-scarlet boughs of the wind-loud 

woodlands, 
(O woodlands riotous, laughter-loud!) 
And peaks on peaks, and skies on skies 
Haze-throbbing with a melting floating gold — 

harvest gold — 
Acres blooming off toward the skies, 
Tender green-heaving wave-silvered seas soft slid- 
ing, soft spilling, 
O after the sparkling weather of rare divine 

harvest hours 
Come the Death-birth Days of Autumn. 



Excerpts from Adam and Eve 215 

ADAM'S PRAYER 

O TENDER God, ' 
O God, my Father of Love — 

I ask but one boon in this prayer; grant that, O 
Brother Soul, 

And I am man enough to do the rest ! 

Give me the rush of your love to get in my heart 
and life. 

Give me your pourings of love to get in my brain, 
my flesh, 

And with this power within me I shall unswerv- 
ingly 

Labor my daily labor, struggle my bitter struggle. 

And do the deeds for Souls by which I live and 
grow! 

O God, my Father of Love — 

O tender God — 

That grant me : there is nothing else to ask. 

Then shall I be a noble Laborer, 

Then shall I be a noble Father, 

Then shall I be a noble Husband, 

Then shall I be a Soul, a God, — and what more 
is demanded. Lord? 

My life shall then be lived — 

Amen. 



2i6 Excerpts from Adam and Eve 

EVE TO HER CHILD 

AND is It you at last, sweet, 
And have you come to me? 
iVnd are you real — and does the pain I am 
Mean you are live? O dear sweet father, God, 
I know you now ; I know how you have felt 
When from your side a planet or a life 
Sundered and swam and lived and lay in glory, 
Perfect Creation ! — 
There are words of glory. 
There are songs of splendor 

That struggle to my lips and die in adoration — 
But here, this babe, this life, this child, this soul, 
This, this Is the word of glory and this the song of 

splendor. 
The purest in the world uttered, the sweetest to 

your ear! 



Excerpts from Adam and Eve 217 

THE CHILD 

HIS love's become visible. 
Lo, it has taken 
Image from both of us, 
Culled out our beauties, 
Drank of our passions, 
Snatched of our spirits, 
And stands incarnated. 
Us, yet so different, 
Love, yet so human, 
God, yet so earthly, 
Man, yet divine! 



2l8 Excerpts from Adam and Eve 

SUNRISE ON THE MOUNTAIN TOP 

Eve: Dawn, dawn again — 

Adam: Up through the East, swift skies — 

Eve : Over the Ocean of Mountains 

Flow of the ghmmering stars — 
Adam: Glimmer, sparkle, and darkness — (stars!) 
Eve : Darkness and dim star-glimmer — 
Adam : And our hearts surge red — 
Eve: Red with Spring's maddening blood — 
Adam: Cascades and freshets of rillets Spring- 
swollen — 
Eve: And God — God again — 
Adam: O fire-sheeted revelation — 
Eve: My heart's all God's — 
Adam: Lo, we are on Earth's sky-apex — 
Eve : A planet unrolls at our feet — 
Adam: We are held by Earth's arms to the stars, 

Two babes pure with God, with God — 
Eve: They snatch us to Eternity — 
Adam : Mist sleeps in the valleys and rolls — 
EvE: Rolls, rolls up the forests — 
Adam: Blows off — shine the locked silver lakes 

In wild, beautiful gorges — 
Eve: In the East, lo, streaked scarlet — 



Excerpts from Adam and Eve 219 

Adam: Golden and purple — 
Eve: The sky's aflame — 
Adam: The world awakes — 
Eve: Life shakes out laughter — 
Adam: Earth scatters mist off and laughs, 

Pulsing red life — 
Eve; O horizons — horizons — 

Fringes of fire — 
Adam: And lo, lo, flame — 
Both : The Sun ! the Sun ! the Sun I 



220 Excerpts from Adam and Eve 

MORNING SONG 

LITTLE sweet child— little wild child- 
Morning — morning — morning has come ! — 
Open the eyelids up to the sun — 
Open the little heart, let God In — 
Little sweet child — little wild child — 
The bird's In the broom (the little brown bird) 
The broom rocks the songs from him, rocks him 

and cradles him, 
Shaking song out that God loves to hear ! 
O so your own mother, little darling baby, 
Rocks her pink bird, her rosy-white bird, 
Till the little lips open, till the little lips sing, 
And God is glad, and the world's made over! 

Little sweet child — little wild child — 

Do you dream what the Spring means tossing up 

roses ? 
Do you know what the Spring means, scattering 

wild buds? 
God's filling up the whole world with wee babies, 
Beautiful babies, lisping, sweet babies, 
And so Is your mother, your own fond mother. 
Your foolish fond mother, tossing up roses. 
Wild roses — red roses — roses of hearts ! 
Wild buds — sweet buds — blossoms of souls — 
Dance with the morning, and sing, heart, with joy! 



Excerpts from Adam and Eve 221 

UNDER THE LEAVES OF THE MAPLE 

UNDER the leaves of the maple, 
Last year's leaves in the hollow, 
In the forest we have burled the dead child ! 
Kissed the cold brow, smoothed the garments, 
Laid him tenderly and sweetly 
Under the leaves of the maple, 
Last year's leaves in the hollow, 
And the little body lies in the fresh, the greening 

woods. 
Under the stars and the sapphire 
Heavens of Springtide midnight, 
Kissing the body we loved. 
Blessing the soul that had passed. 
Under the leaves of the maple. 
Last year's leaves in the hollow. 
We buried the child and our hearts deep in the 

deep-green woods. 
And a mocking bird sang a wild warble, wild 

warble. 
Through the soul of the night. 
And a brook gushed a freshet of trilllng-clear 

music 
Over stones, through the midnight. 



222 Excerpts from Adam and Eve 

And the forest tops hymned a low hymn to the 
sparkling starred skies 

And the tangles and thickets soft-rustled In child- 
ish-sweet lisps, 

And under the leaves of the maple, 

Last year's leaves in the hollow. 

We buried our hearts, our hearts, and passed with 
tears through the woods. 



Excerpts from Adam and Eve 223 

HYMN ON THE MOUNTAIN 

BLOW my voice, O wind of the mountain, 
blow my voice, 
With a song of the glory of our God, the Lord, 
Till you wash gigantic Earth with one rolling hymn 

of praise! 
Over the face of the prairies, the desert, the waste 

of the waters 
Undulate the heavenly, the heavenly hallowed 

grace 
That streaks my psalm to God. 
On the peaks of victory 

I am lifting my voice to my God, the most high, 
O praised be His name ! 
Yea, there Is a heart in my breast, and there is a 

soul in my flesh. 
They will not down, O God, they rise and bless 

your name. 
Your star-bathed wilderness, God, I love it : 
My feet went through the wild forest softly, ador- 
ing you, 
And the music of the brook was your clear-tongued 

benediction. 
And the murmur of moved leaves was your bless- 
ing. Lord, my God. 



224 Excerpts from Adam and Eve 

O hallowed days and nights, 

O hallowed Earth softsliding through the thick 

heavens, 
O rain of passionate light from night's quick 

sparkles, the stars, 
O broad and varied World, stirring in the heart 

of God! 
What shall the mourner say, singing on peaks 

God-mighty? 
O shaken his heart is, for a moving glory glides 
Down the rain-washed wilderness to the hollows 

of gorges wild — 



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